...that we blogged about here.

What's new, you ask?  Quite a bit... we've been busy.

  1. We have changed the way you input transaction log growth.  In the previous versions you had to enter how many transactions (in gigabytes) you expected the server to generate in a day.  Many customers found that was hard to quantify and thus left the default value.  The problem there is the default value was specific to the example configuration provided.  Thus changing any of the values resulted in truth a different transaction log generation profile.  Now what we do is base transaction log generation growth on the message profile.  So a heavy message profile mailbox will generate 28 transaction logs per day.  This provides us and you a way to accurately predict the database and log capacity requirements based on the message profile.
  2. We incorporated the effects of using online mode clients in terms of the database read I/O operations.  For more information on the effects online mode clients can have against the mailbox server read I/O operations, see the Storage Validation blog article.
  3. We added a new tab to the calculator.  We now have a Backup Requirements tab that outlines the backup scheme based on the backup methodology and frequency chosen.
  4. We made a few bug fixes in a few calculations (e.g. we were adding in the I/O Overhead Factor twice in the case of transaction log I/O transfers).
  5. General formatting changes to ensure that users would understand the requirements around per replica, per node, etc.

We have attached the new version of the calculator to the original post. Let us know if any questions/suggestions!

- Ross Smith IV