Is there any evidence of performance degradation when exceeding the max sizing recommendations indicated on technet? http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998874.aspx At some level I would like to standardize the platform, is there an issue with CAS and Hub transport roles on dual quad core (8 core systems)? There have been some speculation on bottlenecks on front-side bus, but I haven't found anything that indicates actual degradation with over provisioned hardware? Thanks, Ron

Hi Ron, My understanding from reading this statement "Maximum is defined as the upper bound of viable processor and memory configurations based on price and performance." from that article, is that it is basically talking about bang for your buck. I haven't heard of any actual performance issues with going to 8 cores on a CAS server but if you see problems you can always use the boot switch to disable the extra cores. Thanks Will

Hi, So far, we do not find any related issues. But If Exchange server has more than 8 physical processors installed, additional configuration tuning may be required. If this server is using hyper-threading technology, no action is required. More detail information you can refer to the below article: This Exchange server has more than 8 processors http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997659.aspx Please feel free to post here if you have more questions. Hope it helps. Xiu