Hello there everyone! I am here to seek some advice. I currently have a 5-user Exchange 2007 server (all roles) running in a VM with 2GB of RAM. It runs stable and is very quick. The physical machine has a Core 2 Duo 2.13GHz processor with 6GB of RAM Lately, I have been considering an upgrade to Exchange 2010, because I am very pleased with the new OWA interface. I also hear of performance improvements across the board. However, I have read that Exchange 2010 uses quite a fair bit of memory and requires more computing 'muscle' than what my VM can provide. What are your experiences with Exchange 2010 with only 2GB of RAM? Any important information I should take note of? Thanks everyone for your input and time!

The recomended RAM for Exchange 2010 all server roles combined server is 8GB RAM http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd346700(EXCHG.140).aspx Running with 2 GB can b done but it will be slow. Do you have anything else running on your physical server? lasse at humandata dot se, http://anewmessagehasarrived.blogspot.com

I have another Server 2008 VM doing AD and a Server 2003 x64 VM doing IIS. The server has about ~1GB of RAM left. What do you mean by slow? Sending/receiving email messages? Thanks for the help!

Since Exchange want more RAM it will page RAM on to disk instead. So you will get a server use disk very much and with that about everything will be sluggish. Outlook in chace mode will hide this to end user for most part, but not always. I would not run Exchange 2010 with 2GB of RAM in production. lasse at humandata dot se, http://anewmessagehasarrived.blogspot.com

Thanks Lasse for your input. Indeed it seems like it will be slow. Thanks for your help!

RAM is pretty cheap these days, it would be worth buying a couple of GB to get things going. lasse at humandata dot se, http://anewmessagehasarrived.blogspot.com

Haha that is true. Unfortunately this server only takes a maximum of 8GB of RAM, and thus isn't very 'upgradable' at all :) Do any other admins have experience running E2010 on 2GB RAM?

I agree with Lasse, running on 2GB of RAM is not in any way recommended in production, if the machine can handle 8GB, then add 8GB? In lab it might work to run with 2GB but then you don't have the same load and requirements Jonas Andersson | Microsoft Community Contributor Award 2011 | MCITP: EMA 2007/2010 | Blog: http://www.testlabs.se/blog | Follow me on twitter: jonand82

Hi, >Do any other admins have experience running E2010 on 2GB RAM? If you install multiple roles in only one server I suggest that you need at least 4 GB plus 3-30 MB additional memory per mailbox. Of course you can run Exchange 2010 with only 2GB RAM if you only maintain few users on your server. But it is really slow.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 to all, especially Lasse, for the prompt reply. It seems that I will have to stay with Exchange 2007 for now, and only move to Exchange 2010 when I have better hardware. Again, I am thanking you guys a million times inside, but on the outside I remain quite frugal :)

First and foremost are you licensed for it? The cost for upgrading your licensing may be cost prohibitive. Also servers are cheap nowadays, I cant imagine running on a server with 2 gigs of ram.

roy, you have brought up a great point that I have not yet considered: cost. From all the information I have gathered, I have deduced that Exchange 2010 does not run well on 2GB of RAM. Therefore, I will not be upgrading. Thanks to all! Marking this question as solved.