How many Exchange mailboxes can one EV server process in a 24 hour period?

[ANDREY_FYODOROV]

Just wondering what's the max number of Exchange mailboxes you have seen being processed by one EV server.

We have some EV servers that archive from Exchange servers with ~2,000 mailboxes. They seem to be doing OK, but sometimes they fall behind (the A5 queue slowly creeps up)

[RahulG]

I have seen maximum of 5000 users being archive by a single ev server . If the number of mailboxes are more  and they have mailboxes have less item to be archive , the time to pass thorught the mailboxes without archving is more .make sure the MSMQ size have proper vaule set .

[AndrewB]

it's really more about how many messages you have in the mailboxes that the tasks needs to scan and how many messages are eligible to archive. you can also customize the mailbox archiving tasks to create more connections to the exchange server and more or less messages to archive per pass so it can process the optimal amount of mailboxes per run.

[AndrewB]

also, if you see it "falling behind" you might need to increase your archiving window or adjust it to times when the exchange servers arent busy with user activity or backups.

[ANDREY_FYODOROV]

Thank you for all your responses.

Well, I have been using EV since 2005, tinkering with the schedules, numbers of concurrent threads and number of messages per pass. We have it under control now.

We are getting to a point where we are thinking about consolidating a few of out Exchange 2007 servers to a larger Exchange 2010 server that could end up hosting up to 5,000 users.

How do organizations with REALLY large Exchange servers use EV (for example 20K mailboxes on a single Exchange server)?

[Ameen]

If you have more mailboxes on a server then you have to keep watching A5 queue and if its getting high after background archival window then you have to change the number of items archived per mailbox in one run or extent the archival window. The maximum mails can be archived from a mailbox in one run is 9999 its better to keep low as the task has try to archive this much items in each mailboxes and the archival window may not be enough if you have more mailboxes.

[Peter_Kozak · Accepted solution]

Use Exchange 2010 - split the Databases to a DAG use for best performance 1 EV Server per DAG Member...

/Peter

[Prone2Typos]

Hey there.

The example you gave is not super realizistic in my opinion. THe reason being is that large organizations divide teh workload across several servers. This is true of the CAS and the MBX role. This is not just or even for EV but makes sense for fail over, high availability, and scalibility. Backing up a single Exchange server with 20k users on it would prove to be challenging for most backup solutions and would prove to be challenging for most archiving solutions.

With that stated, there is a ballance here.. the number of items you are attempting to archive per pass, number of threads per task, server resources available/utilized, and overall archive window would all play into this equation. There is some level of tuning that needs to take place, but the number you suggested is pretty large in my opinion. 

We hope this helps. If someone in here answered your questions or concerns related to this posting then plase flag it as resolved so that others offering help do not come in here to assist where it may no longer be needed.

[ANDREY_FYODOROV]

This is what I was hoping to hear  :)