Hello I have heard the term IOPS used in relation to Exchange server several times, especially in conjunction with Blackberry, but I'm still unsure what it actually means. When someone says that a BES server can increase the IOPS by 4 times a normal user, could someone please explain how this works?

IO per second It's how much IO @20 ms or less latency a user mailbox creates generally expressed in conjunction with a read/write ratio. If you are using Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010, go to www.msexchangeteam.com website and download the mailbox role storage calculator for your version of Exchange. On the input tab, you put general information about your design and define user IO loads for Tiers. In the user profile section, there is a field called "IOPS multiplication factor" If the tier includes blackberry then: For Exchange 2007 put 3.0 in that field. For Exchange 2010 put 2.4 in that field. That's exactly what this field is for; you create a seperate tier for your blackberry users and put the right multiplication factor in there. Check the version tab around version of 16.5 of the Exchange 2007 calculator, and it will become clear why I know what to put in there. Although I don't know if there still exists a caclulator for Exchange 2003, the multiplication factor for 2003 was 3.64. John

Thanks... Back the Blackberry example, are they saying that; 1. Assuming an average user generates IOPS activity of z, that having the user Blackberry activated means that they will generate 3.64 multiplied by z units of IOPS? or 2. If a server generates y IOPS of activity, then having users Blackberry activated means that the server will generate 3.64 mulitplied by y? The problem I'm having understanding is what exactly the 3.64 refers to and how it fits in

On Sun, 14 Nov 2010 15:25:14 +0000, Joe Budden wrote: >Back the Blackberry example, are they saying that; 1. Assuming an average user generates IOPS activity of z, that having the user Blackberry activated means that they will generate 3.64 multiplied by z units of IOPS? For Exchange 2003, yes. >or > >2. If a server generates y IOPS of activity, then having users Blackberry activated means that the server will generate 3.64 mulitplied by y? The problem I'm having understanding is what exactly the 3.64 refers to and how it fits in It's multiplier to be used with each BES account. If ALL your mailboxes have BES access then the multiplier applies to each and every account. If ony 100 accounts use BES and 900 others don't then create a class of BES users with a population of 100 and apply the multiplier to that group. The intention is to give you the number of IOPS that your user population will generate. The design of your storage must be able to handle that workload. E.g. if you have a total IOPS of 500 and each spindle can handle 100 IOPS then you need 5 spindles (I've just selected numbers at random, here, but you get the idea). --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

Hi, The following article could be useful: A few basic concepts in disk sizing http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2004/10/11/240868.aspx 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. Thanks Gen Lin-MSFT