Compaq ProLiant 1600 Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 on the Compaq ProLiant 1600 - Page 5

First, consider whether benchmarks are performed on what can be referred to as customerdeployable configurations. A hardware vendor may publish a result that is based on a platform or configuration that should not be deployed in a real-world Exchange Server deployment. For example, many vendors have published results using disk subsystems configured with RAID0 disk arrays. While RAID0 does provide the highest levels of disk subsystem performance, it fails to provide any protection against data loss. In addition, most vendors, including Compaq, conduct benchmarks for Microsoft Exchange Server that are single-server in nature. In the real-world of messaging, customer sites are usually multi-server and multi-site. Single-server, single-site lab benchmarks do not account for the communication demands from other servers on the network. Second, keep in mind that benchmarks do not account for issues such as backup and disaster recovery or information store maintenance sizing. Whatever the issue, care must be taken when interpreting benchmarks to ensure that they represent useful information for your Exchange Server deployment and are based on valid simulation methodologies. While it is significant that the ProLiant 1600 server can successfully scale to 8000 medium MAPI e-mail users in a single site, single store benchmark exercise, Compaq does not recommend deploying 8000 users on this configuration. Compaq recommends careful evaluation of all issues involved in real-world Exchange Server deployments such as management, administration, and disaster recovery. Load Simulator The main tool used in generating the workload for this scalability demonstration was the Microsoft Exchange Server Load Simulation utility called Load Simulator. Load Simulator is a tool for simulating a client user load on an Exchange Server. Its purpose is to enable a single Windows NT machine called a LoadSim client to simulate multiple Microsoft Exchange client users. The operation of Load Simulator users is governed by a Load Simulator profile. This profile controls factors such as how long a Load Simulator "day" is, how many e-mail messages to send in a day's time, how many times to open and read e-mail, whether to use distribution lists, whether to use public folders, etc. Load Simulator creates a highly accurate simulation of reality. It mimics the full Microsoft Exchange Client in many respects. First, it uses .MSG files, the same format used by the Exchange Client. This guarantees that messages generated by Load Simulator have the same properties as those sent by real users of the Exchange Client. Second, Load Simulator uses the same MAPI remote procedure call (RPC) semantics as those used by the Client. Third, Load Simulator registers MAPI change notifications in the same manner as they are registered by the Client. Finally, Load Simulator even emulates the Microsoft Exchange Client list box cache, which the Client uses for folder and message panes in the viewer when a user browses and selects messages on the server. ECG1090898