Hi I'm currently in the process of replacing my old DC with Exchange (both 2k3) and setting new server. I'm going through Rui Silva artical http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Optimize-Exchange-2003-Performance-Part1.html and stop on his 3rd tip where he suggested not to make any changes that should come with physical memory grater than 1GB if exchange is installed on DC. My new server has 4GB physical memory and I have already made changes in boot.ini file (/3GB /USERVA=3030) and also change registry values (HeapDeCommitFreeBlockThreshold to 0x00040000 and SystemPages to 0). Is there any particular reason why I shouldn't make those changes on DC?Another question is related to storage design. Is keeping Exchange transaction logs and databases stored on separate disk volumes which are only partitions of the RAID-5 disk array will improve performance?Thank you for your helpBialy

Ideally you dont have Exchange running on a DC. this is because the AD database and Exchange compete for the same memory space. the /3gb switch moves the line in the sand closer to one or the other (system or processes). therefore its best to just leave it alone. the second question: first, a "partition" is not a form of a "volume". volume means physical disk, or set of physical disks (LUN). the recommendation to keep transaction logs and database files seperate is for performance, but more importantly for recoverability in the event of a disk failure. putting a partition in place not only defeats the purpose of performance, but also doesnt allow for disk recovery. see this picture: http://i.technet.microsoft.com/Aa998073.b48d94af-146d-4dff-9955-ac00752e4660(en-us,EXCHG.65).gif in this article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998073(EXCHG.65).aspx -read the article too..