Planning for Growth

When choosing hardware for servers, consider future needs and choose servers that can be easily expanded. As the number of users and connectors in a site grows, you can reconfigure the existing hardware rather than add more servers. There are several ways to make the most of existing server hardware for Microsoft Exchange Server:

• Increase the amount of system memory for each server.
• Upgrade the processors on existing servers or use multiprocessors in existing servers.
• Increase the number, speed, and size of the disks or disk arrays.
• Add more disk drives to the volume set.
• Replace disk drives and volume sets with striped drive arrays.
• Limit the number of non-Microsoft Exchange Server software processes on the server by moving them to other computers.

By planning ahead, you can choose hardware that can be easily upgraded. If you identify a bottleneck after installation, you can upgrade rather than purchase a new server or change the site layout.