Optimizing Performance

How many users can be supported on a Microsoft Exchange Server computer? This is the most frequently asked question about performance ¾ and the most difficult one to answer.

The number of users that a server can support isn't the same for every organization. Organizations use e-mail in different ways and have different hardware. The number of users per server also depends on what an organization considers to be acceptable response times and what tradeoffs can be made between server load and client response times.

This chapter provides background information about performance to help you implement Microsoft Exchange Server and describes the issues to consider when you're deciding how many users your server can support. It also describes how server hardware affects performance and how Microsoft Exchange Server optimizes performance. For more information about planning your servers, see Chapter 8, "Planning Your Servers." For more information about optimizing performance, see the Microsoft Exchange Server Resource Guide, Supplement.