NEw exchange server 2003 Deployment

[revururaj]

Hello:

We are in the process of purchasing and deploying a new exchange server.

Here is what i want your suggestions for.

1. Currently we are 75 employees,and probably we will go around 200 employess in 2 years from now. So keeping this in mind i should do a capacity planning.

Buying the hardware is the biggest challenge now for us. As you are all well experienced with this kinda of scenario, can you please explain how much i should look for
1. hard drive space
2. Memory
3. RAID

and is there any tutorial i can use.


Thanks,

 

[wdoellefeld]

1. hard drive space
This depends on the mailbox limits you will decide upon (if any). It's pretty simple really. If you have 100 mailboxes and decided to set hard limits (no more send and receive) at 1024 mb (which is extremely generous) then you can just calculate the size you will be at with 200 users and adjust accordingly.

2. Memory
Exchange loves memory. In your case 2gig will work fine at 75 users but 4gig+ will be even better. Buying 2 now with the ability to add more later may be a good idea.

3. RAID
There are tons of different opinions about this. For an organization of your expected size personally I would choose a RAID1 / RAID5. OS on the RAID1 and the mail stores on the RAID5. Using 15k rpm drives makes this even better.

FRCP

http://www.frcp.net