Ask the Perf Guy: Update to scalability guidance for Exchange 2016

I’m happy to announce a significant update to our scalability guidance for Exchange 2016. Effective immediately, we are increasing our maximum recommended memory for deployments of Exchange 2016 from 96 GB to 192 GB.

This change is now reflected within our Exchange 2016 Sizing Guidance, as well as the latest release of the Exchange Server Role Requirements Calculator.

We have received ongoing feedback that the previous recommended maximum memory size of 96 GB was far too limiting, and that it was difficult to purchase modern hardware with memory of that size. We are aware that this has led to many difficult architectural choices, and we have been evaluating multiple types of larger hardware in our Exchange Online deployments to get to a significant level of comfort that customers will not experience issues with utilization of memory up to this size.

At this time, we are not raising the recommended maximum processor core count. While we are evaluating hardware with core counts dramatically larger than 24, we have additional work to do within the Exchange product to be able to safely recommend those core counts.

In summary, the updated Exchange 2016 processor and memory scalability guidance is as follows:

Hopefully this helps to resolve some of the architectural challenges we have been hearing about.

Jeff Mealiffe
Principal PM Manager
Office 365 Customer Experience