Exchange 2010 Need to re-architecture current design I recently took a new position and acquired an existing Exchange 2010 environment. An outside firm did the initial implementation but now I need to restructure the layout and options are extremely welcomed. Current: 2 VMware Guest with all the roles installed on each guest and a DAG configured for the mailbox store. Instead of using a load balancer they configured round-robin DNS. So with the current design and the load on the system the Exchange environment runs hot 60-85% proc utilization, and I need to add 500+ mailboxes to the Exchange environment in the future. 1. 1: So one thought was to keep the existing servers and add 4 new servers and break the CAS and HUB roles. 2. 2. Or keep the existing environment and build new everything and move the mailboxes over to the new environment afterwards Opinions, or other options I’m not seeing? Thanks

I would go with approach 1, provided the VMware infrastructure would support additing additional resources required for future mailbox growth.

1. Spec your vm's for the mbx so that they can handle the load of the additional mailboxes. 2. I would go for option 1 and have dedicated mbx DAG members and have seperate CAS/HUB servers and load balance CAS if this is your intension. 3. Not sure about your AD setup, consider your AD sites too and plan accordingly for HA. 4. Use the exch calculator to help you plan.Sukh

Toshana, Please throw some light on your Design Goal or objective for restructuring your current in exchange infrastructure. or potential risks you see with current design. There really are vast options with exchange 2010 when you want to design a solution i speculate that adding 500 mailboxes would not require to to re-design everything Dhruv

Option 1 should work, but please check article below which would help for the planning Mailbox Storage Design Process James Luo TechNet Subscriber Support in forum If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.