[dcgambino]

We currently run BES 4.1 on a virtual server with 1.5 Gig of RAM allocated. We have 185 devices attached and growing. Does anyone have any suggestions as to when we would need to start looking at adding a 2nd BES?

[DarthBBerry]

2 words - Capacity Calculator. Enjoy!

[dcgambino]

That really doesn't help me. It doesn't have the type of server we run: Intel Xeon 5160 @ 3.00 GHZ and it is virtualized.

Any idea what the rule of thumb is?

[DarthBBerry]

Rule of thumb (in my opinion) 2000 per BES.

[TreeDude]

I remember RIM saying at WES they had BES Exchange servers in VMs with 1 processor and 4gb of RAM with 2000 users. Domino was the same, but only 2gb of RAM. If my memory is good that is.

[kjarrodc]

I've got a very similar configuration - 1.5gb ram VM server. I've had nearly 1300 users on it, but I don't think I'll be doing that again without allocating more ram/cpu to the system. Needless to say, the server was pretty taxed. So, we stood up a second for disaster recovery purposes (in addition to the hardware support offered by going virtual) and moved about 400 users onto the new server. After closely watching the CPU/Ram usage, general consumption went down nearly two thirds in total (not exaggerating - it was significant).

My personal preference in lieu upping the resources on one server would be to get a additional server up before you reach the 1k mark and to not exceed 900 given your configuration (using a shared database of course...). It would give you the option to move users should you need to and sets you up nicely for the HA features they're promising in 5.0.

Honestly, I wish there was a better science to it with the virtual systems.

[dcgambino]

Thank you for your responses.