Ask the Perf Guy: Update to scalability guidance for Exchange 2016
Published Sep 26 2017 10:40 AM 18K Views

I’m happy to announce a significant update to our scalability guidance for Exchange 2016. Effective immediately, we are increasing our maximum recommended memory for deployments of Exchange 2016 from 96 GB to 192 GB. This change is now reflected within our Exchange 2016 Sizing Guidance, as well as the latest release of the Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator. We have received ongoing feedback that the previous recommended maximum memory size of 96 GB was far too limiting, and that it was difficult to purchase modern hardware with memory of that size. We are aware that this has led to many difficult architectural choices, and we have been evaluating multiple types of larger hardware in our Exchange Online deployments to get to a significant level of comfort that customers will not experience issues with utilization of memory up to this size. At this time, we are not raising the recommended maximum processor core count. While we are evaluating hardware with core counts dramatically larger than 24, we have additional work to do within the Exchange product to be able to safely recommend those core counts. In summary, the updated Exchange 2016 processor and memory scalability guidance is as follows:

Recommended Maximum Processor Core Count

24

Recommended Maximum Memory

192 GB

Hopefully this helps to resolve some of the architectural challenges we have been hearing about. Jeff Mealiffe Principal PM Manager Office 365 Customer Experience

13 Comments
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Thank you Exchange Team.
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Do we need any updates to make Exchange use new limits ?
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Regardless to the operating system in use and the net version ?
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@Nawar - No OS requirement; .Net framework requirement is based on the supported Exchange CUs (which for 2016 is CU7 and CU6 as of today).
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Any CU minimum requirement?
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Does this change also apply for Exchange 2013?
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this is only applicable to Exchange 2016.
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Thanks for the update
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Thank you!

this Also will apply for 2013?

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At least modern server setups are now supported by modern Exchange Server versions.
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192 GB sounds super awesome
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Thank for share.
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Is there any technical reason to increase the memory limit to 192GB? If there is no major change in Exchange server, Net or OS, why Microsoft stated 192GB is not good just a few months ago? And Why Microsoft is confident with 192GB at this moment?
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