Please welcome the DAG Active/Active model in the Mailbox Server Role Requirements Calculator

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Yes, there is a new version of the Mailbox Server Role Requirements calculator (v12.3) that supports the Active/Active DAG model.

Enhancements in this version:

  • Incorporated Megacycle adjustment formula changes as documented in Guidance Change- Calculating the Megacycles for Different Processor Configurations Formula.
  • The calculator no longer requires you to enter in the adjusted megacycles per core for the server architecture you are deploying.  Instead, you simply need to obtain the SPECint2006 Rate Value for your server platform.
  • Added Megacycle Multiplication Factor – this works exactly like the IOPS Multiplication Feature does and was added as a result of RIM providing E2010 guidance on megacycle impact due to Blackberry devices.
  • Active/Active user distribution scenarios.  Yes, really!  An Active/Active user distribution architecture has the user population dispersed across both datacenters (usually evenly) with each datacenter being the primary datacenter for its specific user population.  In the event of a failure, the user population can be activated in the secondary datacenter (either via cross-datacenter single database *over or via full datacenter activation).
  • Added a new worksheet/section that documents the Activation Scenarios for DAG deployments. 
  • Added error reporting validation logic if HA solution results in greater than 16 servers in a DAG to not show any results, since the design is invalid.
  • Dumpster size calculations have been optimized as calendar versioning storage has been reduced from 5.8% impact to 3% impact in SP1.

A blog post explaining the calculator (updated for this new version) is here and or you can download the calculator directly.