Exchange 2013: The devourer of RAM!

[mrbios]

Exchange 2010 SP3 here, 2000 mailboxes - 24Gb ram, runs a treat

 

Here's the microsoft document on memory requirements:

Understanding Memory Configurations and Exchange Performance: Exchange 2010 Help

 

So essentially if you have every single role on one server and your mailboxes, 32GB is basically a minimum. Granted that's fine in theory but in practice you never quite seem to need that much, it's clearly stated though. 10Gb for example will always cause exchange to struggle, infact i once had my exchange server running only 8Gb ram, and it crawwwwwwwwwwwwled.

[cpjitservices]

An alternative is Office 365. Let Microsoft do all the hosting/managing and you just concentrate helping users. Each user gets 25GB by default and Exchange 2013 features will be available in the next few months apparently.

 

Disagree, Use Zimbra... Far better!

[chazzy2501]

I run 1100 mailboxes on exchange 2007 (win2k364bit) with 6GB RAM it's fine..

[Tsonga]

I run 1100 mailboxes on exchange 2007 (win2k364bit) with 6GB RAM it's fine..

 

I honestly think exchange 2010 and 2013 have gotten greedy. One example is duplicate emails, If I send out 1 email to 1000 staff in exchange 2007 it keeps one copy, however on 2010 and 2013 it keeps 1000 copies (one for each mailbox). Nightmare.

[SYNACK]

I honestly think exchange 2010 and 2013 have gotten greedy. One example is duplicate emails, If I send out 1 email to 1000 staff in exchange 2007 it keeps one copy, however on 2010 and 2013 it keeps 1000 copies (one for each mailbox). Nightmare.

 

They did this to lower the IOPs requirement for storage as slower storage is cheaper they thought that with lower IOPs you'd get more for less even without singal instance storage. The RAM usage has got mental though, 2003 used 2-4GB and handled stacks of users fine, and quickly. 2010 eats 8GB just for a starter and runs slower.

[Tsonga]

They did this to lower the IOPs requirement for storage as slower storage is cheaper they thought that with lower IOPs you'd get more for less even without singal instance storage. The RAM usage has got mental though, 2003 used 2-4GB and handled stacks of users fine, and quickly. 2010 eats 8GB just for a starter and runs slower.

 

I wonder if it scales better though? Meaning you don't have to have so many exchange servers as an organization gets bigger? No real use for us of course, but Microsoft forget about schools.

 

Do you virtulise your exchange? Tried it once, never again.

[mrbios]

Do you virtulise your exchange? Tried it once, never again.

 

How come? Virtualised fine here on VMware and never had an issue, even when i was underspeccing it with ram.