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Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator Update

Ross Smith IV's avatar
Ross Smith IV
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Oct 15, 2015

 

v7.8 of the calculator introduces support for Exchange 2016! Yes, that’s right, you don’t need a separate calculator, v7.8 and later supports Exchange 2013 or Exchange 2016 deployments. Moving forward, the calculator is branded as the Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator.

When you open the calculator you will find a new drop-down option in the Input tab that allows you to select the deployment version. Simply choose 2013 or 2016:

calc1

When you choose 2016, you will notice the Server Multi-Role Configuration option is disabled due to the fact that Exchange 2016 no longer provides the Client Access Server role.

As discussed in the Exchange 2016 Architecture and Preferred Architecture articles, the volume format best practice recommendation for Exchange data volumes has changed in Exchange 2016 as we now recommend ReFS (with the integrity feature disabled). By default, for Exchange 2016 deployments, the calculator scripts will default to ReFS (Exchange 2013 deployments will default to NTFS). This is exposed in the Export Mount Points File dialog:

calc2

The DiskPart.ps1 and CreateDag.ps1 scripts have been updated to support formatting the volume as ReFS (and disabling the integrity feature at the volume level) and enabling AutoReseed support for ReFS.

This release also improves the inputs of all dialogs for the distribution scripts by persisting values across the various dialogs (e.g., global catalog values).

For all the other improvements and bug fixes, please review the readme or download the update.

As always we welcome feedback and please report any issues you may encounter while using the calculator by emailing strgcalc AT microsoft DOT com.

Ross Smith IV 
Principal Program Manager
Office 365 Customer Experience

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Updated Apr 22, 2020
Version 3.0
Client Access
Deployment
Exchange 2013
exchange 2016
High Availability
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on premises
Planning and Architecture
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  • Deleted's avatar
    Deleted
    Oct 15, 2015
    We are deep into 2016 planning and I truly appreciate how quickly you've been publishing guidance for this release. Kudos to Ross and team
  • Deleted's avatar
    Deleted
    Oct 17, 2015
    I see that the IOPS requirements don't change when you flip between Exchange 2013 and 2016. At Ignite, we were told that the IOPS requirements would be quite a bit lower in 2016 over 2013. Why the discrepancy?


  • Deleted's avatar
    Deleted
    Oct 19, 2015
    That came out fast. Thanks Ross and Team
  • Deleted's avatar
    Deleted
    Oct 19, 2015
    @Constantino Tobio - Great question. At Ignite, we discussed an enhancement to the lagged copy and ReplayLagManager where the system delays a play down in the event there is latency on the volume (>=20ms). This feature reduces the IO impact of the lagged

    copy (replay, specifically). However, a) this feature did not ship in RTM (it's coming in a later CU), b) not all customers deploy the lagged copy and c) most importantly, we never factored in lagged copy replay in our IO sizing (in other words, all copies

    are treated as equal).


    Ross

  • Deleted's avatar
    Deleted
    Dec 21, 2015
    Ross, a lot of times the calculator suggests Odd number of CPU cores. In virtual environment we can assign odd number of CPU cores. However, is this recommended? Or should be factor the next higher multiple of 2/4 vCPU.