IBM Flex System: A Solid Foundation for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

IBM Flex System: A Solid
Foundation for Microsoft
Exchange Server 2010
Performance metrics and reference architecture for
30,000 Exchange users on IBM Flex System

Systems and Technology Group April 2013
Technical Whitepaper
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© Copyright IBM Corporation 2013
Contents
2 Overview
2 Introduction
5 Test Configuration
8 Solution Validation Methodology
11 Validation Results
13 Reference Architecture
Overview
IBM® builds, tests, and publishes reference configurations and
performance metrics to provide clients with guidelines for sizing
their Microsoft ® Exchange Server 2010 environments. This
document highlights the IBM Flex System™ x240 Compute
Node and IBM Flex System V7000 Storage Node and how they
can be used as the foundation for your Exchange 2010
infrastructure.
To demonstrate the performance of the x240 Compute Node and
Flex V7000 Storage Node, 9,000 mail users are hosted on the
x240 with the mailbox databases residing on the Flex V7000.
Multiple tests are run to validate both the storage and server
running at that workload. The performance metrics are then used
to design a highly available reference architecture for a fictitious
organization with 30,000 employees.
IBM has tested and is releasing this configuration, which is built
using these key components:
 IBM Flex System V7000 Storage Node
 IBM Flex System x240 Compute Node
 Microsoft Windows® Server 2008 R2 SP1
 Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP1
Introduction
This document provides performance characteristics and
reference architecture for an Exchange 2010 mail environment
hosted on an IBM Flex System x240 Compute Node and IBM
Flex System V7000 Storage Node.
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
Exchange Server 2010 software gives you the Flexibility to
tailor your deployment to your unique needs and provides a
simplified way to help keep e-mail continuously available for
your users.
This Flexibility and simplified availability comes from
innovations in the core platform on which Exchange is built.
These innovations deliver numerous advances in performance,
scalability, and improved reliability, while lowering the total
cost of ownership when compared to an Exchange Server 2007
environment.
A new, unified approach to high availability and disaster
recovery helps achieve improved levels of reliability by reducing
the complexity and cost of delivering business continuity. With
new features, such as Database Availability Groups and online
mailbox moves, you can more easily and confidently implement
mailbox resiliency with database-level replication and failover,
all with familiar Exchange management tools.
Administrative advances in Exchange Server 2010 can help you
save time and lower operational costs by reducing the burden on
your IT staff. A new role-based security model, self-service
capabilities, and the Web-based Exchange Control Panel allow
you to delegate common or specialized tasks to your users
without giving them full administrative rights or increasing help-
desk call volume.
For more information
For more information about Microsoft Exchange Server 2010,
visit the following URL:
microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/default.aspx
IBM PureFlex System
To meet today’s complex and ever-changing business demands,
you need a solid foundation of server, storage, networking, and
software resources. Furthermore, it needs to be simple to deploy,
and able to quickly and automatically adapt to changing
conditions. You also need access to, and the ability to take
advantage of, broad expertise and proven guidelines in systems
management, applications, hardware maintenance and more.
IBM PureFlex System is a comprehensive infrastructure system
that provides an expert integrated computing system. It
combines servers, enterprise storage, networking, virtualization,
and management into a single structure. Its built-in expertise
enables organizations to manage and deploy integrated patterns
of virtual and hardware resources through unified management.
These systems are ideally suited for customers who want a
system that delivers the simplicity of an integrated solution
while still able to tune middleware and the runtime environment.
IBM PureFlex System uses workload placement based on virtual
machine compatibility and resource availability. Using built-in
virtualization across servers, storage, and networking, the
infrastructure system enables automated scaling of resources and
true workload mobility.
IBM PureFlex System has undergone significant testing and
validation so that it can mitigate IT complexity without
compromising the Flexibility to tune systems to the tasks

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businesses demand. By providing both Flexibility and
simplicity, IBM PureFlex System can provide extraordinary
levels of IT control, efficiency, and operating agility. This
combination enables businesses to rapidly deploy IT services at
a reduced cost. Moreover, the system is built on decades of
expertise. This expertise enables deep integration and central
management of the comprehensive, open-choice infrastructure
system. It also dramatically cuts down on the skills and training
required for managing and deploying the system. The
streamlined management console makes it easy to use and
provides a single point of control to manage your physical and
virtual resources for a vastly simplified management experience.
IBM PureFlex System combines advanced IBM hardware and
software along with patterns of expertise. It integrates them into
three optimized configurations that are simple to acquire and
deploy so you get fast time to value.
IBM PureFlex System has the following configurations:
 IBM PureFlex System Express, which is designed for small
and medium businesses and is the most affordable entry
point for PureFlex System.
 IBM PureFlex System Standard, which is optimized for
application servers with supporting storage and networking,
and is designed to support your key ISV solutions.
 IBM PureFlex System Enterprise, which is optimized for
transactional and database systems. It has built-in
redundancy for highly reliable and resilient operation to
support your most critical workloads.
Figure 1: Front and rear view of the IBM PureFlex System Enterprise
Chassis
IBM offers the easy-to-manage PureFlex System with the IBM
Flex System V7000 storage node to tackle the most complex
environments.
IBM Flex System V7000 Storage Node
IBM Flex System V7000 Storage Node is an integrated piece of
the PureFlex System and is designed to be easy to use and
enable rapid deployment. The Flex V7000 storage node supports
extraordinary performance and Flexibility through built-in solid
state drive (SSD) optimization and thin provisioning
technologies. With non-disruptive migration of data from
existing storage, you also get simplified implementation,
minimizing disruption to users. In addition, advanced storage
features like automated tiering, storage virtualization, clustering,
replication and multi-protocol support are designed to help you
improve the efficiency of your storage. As part of your Flex or
PureFlex System, Flex V7000 can become part of your highly
efficient, highly capable, next-generation information
infrastructure.
Highlights
 A single user interface to manage and virtualize internal and
third-party storage that can improve storage utilization
 Built-in tiering and advanced replication functions are
designed to improve performance and availability without
constant administration
 Single user interface simplifies storage administration to
allow your experts to focus on innovation

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Figure 2: IBM Flex System V7000 Storage Node
Flex V7000 system details
Flex V7000 enclosures support up to twenty-four 2.5-inch drives
or up to twelve 3.5-inch drives. Control enclosures contain
drives, redundant dual-active intelligent controllers, and dual
power supplies, batteries and cooling components. Expansion
enclosures contain drives, switches, power supplies and cooling
components. You can attach up to nine expansion enclosures to
a control enclosure supporting up to 240 drives.
Key system characteristics are:
 Internal storage capacity: up to 36 TB of physical storage
per enclosure
 Disk drives: SAS disk drives, near-line SAS disk drives and
solid-state drives can be mixed in an enclosure to give you
extraordinary Flexibility
 Cache memory: 16 GB cache memory (8GB per controller)
as a base feature—designed to improve performance and
availability
 Ports per control enclosure: Eight 8 Gbps Fibre Channel
host ports, four 1 Gbps and optionally four 10 Gbps iSCSI
host ports
 Ports per File Module: Two 1 Gbps and two 10 Gbps
Ethernet ports for server attachment and management, two
8 Gbps FC ports for attachment to Flex V7000 control
enclosures
IBM Flex System x240 Compute Node
IBM Flex System x240 Compute Node, an element of the IBM
PureFlex System, provides outstanding performance for your
mission-critical applications. Its energy-efficient design supports
up to 16 processor cores and 768 GB of memory capacity in a
package that is easy to service and manage. With outstanding
computing power per watt and the latest Intel® Xeon®
processors, you can reduce costs while maintaining speed and
availability.
Highlights
 Optimized for virtualization, performance and highly
scalable networking
 Embedded IBM Virtual Fabric allows IO Flexibility
 Designed for simplified deployment and management
To meet today’s complex and ever-changing business demands,
the x240 compute node is optimized for virtualization,
performance and highly scalable I/O designed to run a wide
variety of workloads. The Flex System x240 is available on
either your PureFlex System or IBM Flex System solution.
Figure 3: IBM Flex System x240 Compute Node
For more information about IBM PureFlex System visit the
following URL:
ibm.com/systems/pureFlex/Flex_overview.html
Test Configuration
The test configuration described in this section is designed to
demonstrate the server performance for a preconfigured
Exchange 2010 user population running a specific workload. It
is not designed as an Exchange “solution” because it does not
include high-availability features. If a production environment
were implemented as described in the Test Configuration portion

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of this document, the server itself would be a single point of
failure. For a valid Exchange solution which is based on the tests
performed and illustrated in this section, please turn to the
section labeled, Reference Architecture on page 13.
To demonstrate the performance characteristics of the x240
compute node and the Flex V7000 storage node, the test
configuration is designed to support 9,000 Exchange mailboxes.
The Client Access Server (CAS) and Hub Transport Server
(HUB) are deployed in a 1:1 ratio with the mailbox server in a
multi-role assignment (i.e., the CAS role and the Transport role
are installed on the same physical server with one CAS/HUB
server per mailbox server). For testing purposes, the CAS/HUB
server is deployed virtually on physical hardware separate from
the mailbox server.
This test configuration uses two domain controllers in a single
Active Directory forest.
Exchange Load Generator 2010 (LoadGen) is used to generate
user load for the server performance evaluation testing (see
details below). Three LoadGen clients are required to generate
sufficient load to simulate 9,000 mailboxes.
Exchange Server Jetstress 2010 is used to run stress tests against
the Flex V7000 storage node.
I/O Connectivity
Figure 4 shows the internal I/O links between the compute nodes
in the Flex System Enterprise Chassis and the four I/O modules
in the rear of the chassis.
Each of these individual I/O links can be wired for 1 GB or 10
GB Ethernet, or 8 or 16 GBps Fibre Channel. You can enable
any number of these links. The application-specific integrated
circuit (ASIC) type on the I/O Expansion adapter dictates the
number of links that can be enabled. Some ASICs are two port
and some are four port. For a two port ASIC, one port can go to
one switch and one port to the other providing high availability.
Figure 4: Internal connections to the I/O modules
Figure 5 illustrates the Fibre Channel 8 GB internal connections
between the x240 compute node and the Flex V7000 storage
node. A single dual-port HBA provides the 8 GB internal
connections to the storage.
Figure 5: Internal 8 GB connections between the server and storage

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Figure 6 illustrates the test environment’s design and mail flow.
Traffic originates from the LoadGen client. The network switch
routes traffic to the ADX, which assigns the traffic to the CAS
server (in a production environment the ADX would route traffic
to load-balanced CAS server which is part of a CAS array).
Traffic routes back through the network switch and to the CAS
server. The CAS server then routes the package to the mailbox
server.
Figure 6: Mail flow
Server Configuration
The x240 compute node is equipped with two Intel Xeon E5-
2670 2.6 GHz 8-core processors and 192GB of memory.
Hyperthreading is enabled.
Storage Configuration
The underlying storage design consists of multiple hard disk
types, combined into logical groups called MDisks, which are
then used to create storage pools. The storage pools are then
divided into volumes which are assigned to host systems.
An MDisk (managed disk) is a component of a storage pool that
is comprised of a group of identical hard disks that are part of a
RAID array of internal storage. Figure 7 lists the disks used to
build the MDisks used in this test. MDisk0 is comprised of eight
300 GB SAS 15k hard drives. MDisk1 is comprised of two 400
GB SSD hard drives. MDisk2 is comprised of eight 900 GB
SAS 10k hard drives.
A storage pool is a collection of storage capacity that provides
the capacity requirements for a volume. One or more MDisks
make up a storage pool.
A volume is a discrete unit of storage on disk, tape, or other data
recording medium that supports some form of identifier and
parameter list, such as a volume label or input/output control. By
default, all volumes that you create are striped across all
available MDisks in one storage pool.
Figure 7: MDisks comprised of internal disks
Figure 8 illustrates the storage pools (and the MDisks that make
up each particular pool) as well as the logical volumes created
from each of the storage pools.

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Figure 8: Storage pool design
The mailbox server supports 12 mailbox databases as well as 12
log files. The three volumes shown in Figure 8 are assigned to
accommodate the mailbox databases and three smaller volumes
are assigned to accommodate the log files.
Figure 9 illustrates the mailbox database and log distribution
between the volumes.
Figure 9: Volumes assigned to the x240 compute node
Solution Validation Methodology
The testing required two phases: the storage performance
evaluation phase and the server performance evaluation phase.
Microsoft provides two tools to evaluate both aspects of an
Exchange environment: Exchange Server Jetstress 2010
(Jetstress) for testing the performance of the storage system, and
Microsoft Exchange Load Generator (LoadGen) for testing
server performance.
Storage Validation
Storage performance is critical in any type of Exchange
deployment. A poorly performing storage subsystem will result
in high transaction latency, which will affect the end-user
experience. It is important to correctly validate storage sizing
and configuration when deploying Exchange in any real-world
scenario.
In order to facilitate the validation of Exchange storage sizing
and configuration, Microsoft provides a utility called Exchange
Server Jetstress 2010. Jetstress simulates an Exchange I/O
workload at the database level by interacting directly with the
Extensible Storage Engine (ESE). The ESE is the database
technology that Exchange uses to store messaging data on the
mailbox server role. Jetstress can simulate a target profile of user
count and per-user IOPS, and validate that the storage subsystem
is capable of maintaining an acceptable level of performance
with the target profile. Test duration is adjustable and can be set
to an extended period of time to validate storage subsystem
reliability.

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Testing storage systems using Jetstress focuses primarily on
database read latency, log write latency, processor time, and the
number of transition pages repurposed per second (an indicator
of ESE cache pressure). The Jetstress utility returns a Pass or
Fail grade, which is dependent on the storage performance.
Test Execution and Data Collection
To ensure that the storage can handle the load generated by
9,000 users, Jetstress is installed and run on the mailbox server.
The Jetstress instance running on the mailbox server simulates
load for 9,000 mailboxes.
Although Jetstress is installed and run from the mailbox server,
it does not test the performance characteristics of the server
itself. Jetstress is designed to test the performance characteristics
of the storage system only.
After the test completes, Jetstress generates a report with a Pass
or Fail grade for the test.
Server Validation
For validating server performance, Microsoft provides a utility
called Exchange Load Generator.
LoadGen is a pre-deployment validation and stress testing tool
that introduces various types of workloads into a test (non-
production) Exchange messaging system.
LoadGen simulates the delivery of multiple MAPI client
messaging requests to an Exchange mailbox server. To simulate
the delivery of these messaging requests, LoadGen is installed
and run from client computers which have network connectivity
to the Exchange test environment. These tests send multiple
messaging requests to the Exchange mailbox server, which
causes a mail-based performance load on the environment.
After the tests are complete, you can use the results to assist
with:
 Verifying the overall deployment plan
 Identifying bottlenecks on the server
 Validating Exchange settings and server configurations
LoadGen Profile
The LoadGen profile information in the table below was used to
validate the test environment.
LoadGen Configuration Value
Messages Send/Receive Per Day 100
Average Message Size 75 KB
Mailbox Size 250 MB
Testing for Peak Load
When validating your server design, it is important to test the
solution under anticipated peak workload rather than average
workload. Most companies experience peak workload in the
morning when employees arrive and check e-mail. The
workload then tapers off throughout the remainder of the day.
Based on a number of data sets from Microsoft IT and other
clients, peak load is generally equal to two times the average
workload throughout the remainder of the work day.
LoadGen uses a task profile that defines the number of times
each task will occur for an average user within a simulated day.
The total number of tasks that need to run during a simulated
day is calculated as the number of users multiplied by the sum of
task counts in the configured task profile. LoadGen then
determines the rate at which it should run tasks for the
configured set of users by dividing the total number of tasks to
run in the simulated day by the simulated-day length. For
example, if LoadGen needs to run 1,000,000 tasks in a simulated
day, and a simulated day is equal to 8 hours (28,800 seconds),
LoadGen must run 1,000,000 ÷ 28,800 = 34.72 tasks per second
to meet the required workload definition. By default, LoadGen
spreads the tasks evenly throughout the simulated work day.
To ensure that the Exchange solution is capable of sustaining the
workload generated during the peak average, modify LoadGen
settings to generate a constant amount of load at the peak
average level, rather than spreading out the workload over the
entire simulated work day. To increase the amount of load to the
desired peak average, divide the default simulated day length (8
hours) by the peak-to-average ratio (2) and use this as the new
simulated-day length.

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To change the simulated-day length, modify the following
section of the LoadGenConfig.xml file to reflect a 4-hour
simulated day:
<SimulatedDayLengthDuration>P0Y0M0DT8H0M0S<
/SimulatedDayLengthDuration>
Change to:
<SimulatedDayLengthDuration>P0Y0M0DT4H0M0S<
/SimulatedDayLengthDuration>
Test Execution and Data Collection
Testing large Exchange environments requires a staged start of
the LoadGen clients to prevent RPC requests from queuing up.
When RPC requests in queue exceed 1.5 times the number of
simulated users, LoadGen initiates test shutdown. Therefore, a
4-hour, ramp-up time is required to stage the LoadGen client
startup, resulting in a 16-hour test duration. Performance data is
collected for the full 16-hour duration of all five test runs.
Performance summary data is then taken from an 8-hour stable
period. Figure 10 shows the collected performance data for the
entire test with the stable period highlighted in gray.
Figure 10: Sample Perfmon data showing the highlighted stable
period
Content Indexing
Content indexing was disabled during the test period due to the
added time between test runs required to completely index the
databases. A production environment with content indexing
enabled could experience an additional load of up to 20%.
Test Validation Criteria
To verify server performance, Microsoft Performance Monitor
(Perfmon) was used to record the data points described in this
section.
Mailbox Server
The following table lists the performance counters collected on
the MAILBOX server as well as the target values.
Perfmon Counter Target Value
MSExchangeIS
Mailbox(_Total)Messages Queued
For Submission
< 50 at all
times
MSExchangeIS
Mailbox(_Total)Messages
Delivered/sec
Scales linearly
with number
of mailboxes
MSExchangeISRPC Requests < 70 at all
times
MSExchangeISRPC Averaged
Latency
Average < 10
Processor(_Total)%Processor Time <80%
MSExchangeIS Mailbox(_Total)Messages Queued For
Submission
The total number of messages queued for the submission counter
shows the current number of submitted messages not yet

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processed by the transport layer. This value should be below 50
at all times.
MSExchangeIS Mailbox(_Total)Messages
Delivered/sec
The messages delivered per second counter shows the rate that
messages are delivered to all recipients. This indicates current
message delivery rate to the store. This is not so much a
performance metric of the mailbox server, but more an
indication that the LoadGen servers are generating the
appropriate level of load.
This number should scale parallel to the number of simulated
mailboxes.
MSExchangeISRPC Requests
The number of RPC requests indicates the overall RPC requests
currently executing within the information store process. This
should be below 70 at all times.
MSExchangeISRPC Averaged Latency
RPC averaged latency indicates the RPC latency in milliseconds
(msec), averaged for all operations in the last 1,024 packets.
This should not be higher than 10 msec on average.

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For information about how clients are affected when overall
server RPC averaged latencies increase, visit the following
URL:
technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd297964.aspx
Processor(_Total)%Processor Time
For physical Exchange deployments, use the
Processor(_Total)% Processor Time counter and verify that this
counter is less than 80 percent on average.
For more information about Exchange 2010 performance
monitoring, visit the following URL:
technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd335215.aspx
Validation Results
This section lists the results of the Jetstress and LoadGen tests
run against the Flex V7000 storage node and the x240 compute
node.
Storage Results
The storage passed rigorous testing to establish a baseline that
would conclusively isolate and identify any potential bottleneck
as a valid server performance-related issue.
Figure 11 shows a report generated by Jetstress. The 9,000
mailbox test passed with low latencies.
Figure 11: Jetstress results
Figure 12 shows the data points collected during the Jetstress
test run. The second column shows the averaged latency for I/O
Database Reads on all databases. To pass, this number must be
below 20 msec. The highest result for this test is 17.451, which
is somewhat of an outlier; the remaining database instances
performed well below the 17.451 msec response time of instance
3.
The third column shows the averaged latency for I/O Log Writes
on all databases. To pass, this number must be below 10 msec.
The highest result for this test is 0.647.

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Figure 12: Transactional I/O performance
The Jetstress test results show that at 9,000 mailboxes, the
storage performs exceedingly well and has remaining headroom
for additional I/O.
Server Results
This section describes the performance results for the x240
compute node hosting 9,000 mailbox users.
Figure 13 below shows the test results for the x240 compute
node. The first column lists the performance counters and the
expected target values. The second column lists the average
recorded value for each of the counters. The third column lists
the maximum recorded value for each of the counters. The test
values we are most interested in are accentuated in boldface
italics.
Figure 13: Test results for the x240 compute node
The x240 handled the load exceedingly well. The maximum
Messages Queued value remains well below the recommended
maximum of 50. The maximum RPC Requests are also well
below the recommended maximum of 70. The RPC Averaged
Latency is 1.48 which is well below the recommended
maximum average of 10 msec.
The last row in Figure 13 shows the processor load on the x240
compute node. Even under peak load, the processor does not
exceed 24% utilization.
The results of this test demonstrate the x240 compute node is
quite capable for this Exchange 2010 workload on this particular
hardware configuration.

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Reference Architecture
This section describes a highly available Exchange 2010
reference architecture that is based on the test results above.
Customer Profile
The example used for this reference architecture is a fictitious
organization with 30,000 employees. The employee population
is split evenly between two regions. Each region has a datacenter
capable of housing server and storage hardware.
The company has determined the average number of emails sent
and received per day for each user is approximately 100, with an
average email size of 75KB. Each user will be assigned a 500
MB mailbox.
High availability
If an organization has multiple datacenters, the Exchange
infrastructure can be deployed in one or distributed across two or
more sites. Typically the service level agreement currently in
place will determine the degree of high availability and the
placement of the Exchange infrastructure.
In this example, the organization has two datacenters with a user
population that is evenly distributed between the two. The
organization has determined site resiliency is required; therefore,
the Exchange 2010 design will be based on a multiple site
deployment with site resiliency.
Backups
Exchange 2010 includes several new features that provide native
data protection that, when implemented correctly, can eliminate
the need for traditional backups. Traditionally backups are used
for disaster recovery, recovery of accidentally deleted items,
long term data storage, and point-in-time database recovery.
Each of these scenarios is addressed with new features in
Exchange 2010 such as high availability database copies in a
database availability group, recoverable items folders, archiving,
multiple-mailbox search, message retention, and lagged database
copies.
In this example, the organization has decided to forgo traditional
backups in favor of using an Exchange 2010 native data
protection strategy.
Number of database copies
Before determining the number of database copies needed, it is
important to understand the two types of database copies.
High availability database copy – This type of database copy
has a log replay time of zero seconds. When a change is made in
the active database copy, changes are immediately replicated to
passive database copies.
Lagged database copy – This type of database copy has a pre-
configured delay built into the log replay time. When a change is
implemented in the active database copy, the logs are copied
over to the server hosting the lagged database copy, but are not
immediately implemented. This provides point-in-time
protection which can be used to recover from logical corruption
of a database (logical corruption occurs when data has been
added, deleted, or manipulated in a way the user or administrator
did not expect).
Log replay time for lagged database copies
IBM recommends using a replay lag time of 72 hours. This gives
administrators time to detect logical corruption that occurred at
the start of a weekend.
Another factor to consider when choosing the number of
database copies is serviceability of the hardware. If only one
high availability database copy is present at each site, the
administrator is required to switch over to database copy hosted
at a secondary datacenter every time a server needs to be
powered off for servicing. To prevent this, maintaining a second
database copy at the same geographic location as the active
database copy is a valid option to maintain hardware
serviceability and to reduce administrative overhead.
Microsoft recommends having a minimum of three high
availability database copies before removing traditional forms of
backup. Because our example organization chose to forgo
traditional forms of backup, they require at least three copies of
each database.

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In addition to the three high availability database copies, the
organization has chosen to add a fourth, lagged database copy, to
protect against logical corruption.
Database availability groups
With Exchange 2010, the former data protection methods in
Exchange 2007 (Local Continuous Replication, Single Copy
Clusters, Cluster Continuous Replication and Standby
Continuous Replication) have evolved into Database
Availability Groups (DAG). The DAG is the new building block
for highly available and/or disaster recoverable solutions.
A DAG is a group of up to 16 mailbox servers that host a set of
replicated databases and provide automatic database-level
recovery from failures that affect individual servers or databases.
Microsoft recommends minimizing the number of DAGs
deployed for administrative simplicity. However, in certain
circumstances multiple DAGs are required:
 You deploy more than 16 mailbox servers
 You have active mailbox users in multiple sites
(active/active site configuration)
 You require separate DAG-level administrative boundaries
 You have Mailbox servers in separate domains. (DAG is
domain bound)
In our example, the organization is deploying an active/active
site configuration; therefore, they require at least two DAGs.
Mailbox Servers and Database Distribution
Given the decisions above, we can determine the number of
mailbox servers and the mailbox database distribution.
The organization needs at least four servers to support the three
highly available database copies and one lagged copy (a server
can host both lagged database copies and high availability copies
simultaneously).
Figure 14 below illustrates the mailbox database distribution
amongst the required physical servers for one of the two DAGs.
The second DAG will be the mirror image of the first DAG,
with database copies one and two at Site B, and the third copy
and the lagged copy at Site A.
Figure 14: Database distribution amongst servers (per DAG)
This design enables the organization to withstand up to two
server failures without loss of data. For example, if Server 2
fails, the passive copies (number 2) for each database hosted by
Server 2 will activate on Server 1. If Server 1 then fails, the third
database copy hosted at the secondary site could be activated.
With two servers at each site hosting active mailboxes (15,000
users per site), the entire population of 30,000 users is divided
equally amongst the four servers (two servers per DAG)
resulting in 7,500 users per server at normal run time (no failed
servers). The test results above have conclusively shown the
x240 compute node consumes roughly 24% of its processing
power to handle the workload generated by 9,000 users. With a
single server failure, a server would be required to handle the
workload generated by 15,000 users. The additional load of
4,000 users is well within the remaining processing capacity of
the x240 compute node.
Client Access Servers and Transport Servers

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To ease deployments, the Client Access Server (CAS) role, and
the Hub Transport Server (HUB) role are often installed together
on a single physical server, separate from the mailbox servers.
The CAS/HUB servers are then deployed in a 1:1 ratio with
mailbox servers (e.g. one CAS/HUB server per one mailbox
server).
For example, this organization requires four mailbox servers per
DAG for a total of eight mailbox servers. Therefore, eight
additional servers, installed with both the CAS role and the HUB
role, are required to handle the workload generated by 30,000
users.
Storage Sizing
For sizing the storage required by Exchange 2010, Microsoft has
created the Mailbox Server Role Requirements Calculator.
To download the calculator, and get information on its use see
the following URL:
blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2009/11/09/3408737.a
spx
To correctly estimate the number of disks required, and to align
with the testing performed above, a few variables are configured
in the Mailbox Server Role Calculator:
 Disk Type – 900 GB 10k 2.5” SAS
 RAID 1/0 Parity Grouping – 4+4 (to more closely simulate
the 8-disk MDisk groups in a RAID10 configuration)
 Override RAID configuration – Yes; configured for
RAID10 on the database and log LUNs
After customization is complete, the calculator determines 216
disks are required at each site to host the mailbox databases and
logs and to provide a restore LUN for each server.
The Final Configuration
Figure 15 summarizes the end result of the sizing efforts.
The two sites are labeled Site A and Site B. Each site has 15,000
local Exchange users.
Two DAGs span the sites and are labeled DAG-1 and DAG-2 in
the diagram. Site A is the primary site for DAG-1 and Site B is
the primary site for DAG-2.
Primary sites
Primary site refers to the active copies of the mailbox databases
being geographically co-located with the 15,000 Exchange users
of that site.
Two network connections are required for the mailbox servers;
one network for MAPI traffic and one network for database
replication. The networks are labeled as MAPI and Replication
in the diagram.
Each of the DAGs has four mailbox servers. At the primary site
(where the users are co-located with their Exchange mailboxes)
two mailbox servers host the active database copy (Copy-1 in
the diagram) and the first passive copy (Copy-2 in the diagram).
At the secondary site, two mailbox servers host the third passive
copy (Copy-3 in the diagram) and the lagged database copy (Lag
Copy in the diagram). The second DAG is a mirror of the first
DAG. The two mailbox servers hosting the active copy of the
database and the first passive copy are located at Site B while
the third and fourth servers hosting the third passive copy and
the lagged database copy are located at Site A.
Figure 15: The final configuration

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In addition to the mailbox servers, each DAG has four
CAS/HUB servers; two at the DAG’s primary site and two at the
secondary site.
Each site has a global catalog server to provide redundancy at
the domain controller level.
Hardware Required
With redundant SAN switches, network switches, and power
modules, the IBM Flex System Enterprise Chassis provides the
high availability and fault tolerance necessary for an enterprise
class Exchange environment.
Take advantage of redundant power supplies
IBM recommends multiple circuits be used to power the Flex
System Enterprise Chassis, so in the case of a tripped breaker,
the chassis does not become a single point of failure.
Figure 16 illustrates the hardware required at each site to
support the organization’s 30,000 user population.
Each site requires four x240 compute nodes to host the mailbox
role, four x240 compute nodes to host the CAS/HUB role, and if
not already present an additional x240 compute node for a global
catalog server. Each mailbox server should have at least 128 GB
of memory installed and each CAS/HUB server should have at
least 32 GB of memory installed. Each x240 compute node
should have two Intel Xeon E5-2670 2.6 GHz 8-core processors.
To host the database files, each site’s Flex System Enterprise
Chassis will require the Flex System V7000 storage node fully
populated with 900 GB 10K SAS hard disk drives. In addition,
eight fully populated (with the same drive type) V7000 or Flex
V7000 expansion drawers are also required.
Finally, IBM recommends using a hardware-based (rather than
software-based) network load balancer such as the Brocade
ADX 1000 series as shown in the figure below.
Figure 16: Hardware required at each site
Conclusion
The x240 compute node and Flex V7000 storage node
performed well throughout the test durations. These tests
demonstrate the capability of the x240 and Flex V7000 in
supporting 9,000 Exchange 2010 mailboxes on a single x240
compute node. Although the tests are not a true-to-life
deployment scenario the results can be used to build highly
available Exchange architectures as shown in the Reference
Architecture section.
With high availability and fault tolerance built into the platform,
IBM Flex System is a solid foundation for an enterprise
Exchange environment.

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About the author
Roland G. Mueller works at the IBM Center for Microsoft
Technologies in Kirkland, Washington (just 5 miles from the
Microsoft main campus). He has a second office in building 35
at the Microsoft main campus in Redmond, Washington to
facilitate close collaboration with Microsoft.
Roland has been an IBM employee since 2002 and has
specialized in a number of different technologies including:
virtualization, bare-metal server deployment, and Exchange
Server infrastructure sizing, design, and performance testing.
roland.mueller@us.ibm.com

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Produced in the United States of America
April 2013
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IBM Flex System: A Solid Foundation for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

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IBM Flex System: A Solid Foundation for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010