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Appendix B Microsoft Jetstress considerations
Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress 2010 is a simulation tool able to reproduce the database and logs
I/O workload of an Exchange mailbox database role server. It is usually used to verify and validate the
conformity of a storage subsystem solution before the full Exchange software stack is deployed. Some
key elements and consideration about Microsoft Jetstress are:
• Does not require and should not be hosted on a server where Exchange Server is running
• Performs only Exchange storage access and not host processes simulations. It does not
contribute in assessing or sizing the Exchange memory and processes footprints
• Is an ESE application requiring access to the ESE dynamic link libraries to perform database
access. It takes advantage of the same API used by the full Exchange Server software stack and
as such it is a reliable simulation application
• Runs on a single server. When a multiple servers simulation is required, the orchestration of
the distributed instances has to be fostered by external management tools
• Requires, and provides, an initialization step to create and populate the database/s that will be
used for the subsequent test phases. The database/s should be planned of the same capacity
as the one/s planned for the Exchange Server future deployment
• Its Topology layout includes number and size of simulated mailboxes, number and placement
of databases and log files, number of database replica copies (simulates only active databases)
• While carrying out a mailbox profile test, it executes a pre-defined mix of insert, delete, replace
and commit operations against the database objects during the transactional step, then it
performs a full database checksum
• Collects Application and System Event Logs, performance counter values for key performance
indicators of both operating system resources and ESE instances during transactional and DB
checksum phases. It then generates a detailed HTML-based report
• Throttles the disk I/O generation using the assigned IOPS per mailbox, thread count per
database and SluggishSessions threads property (fine tuning for threads execution pace)
For additional information about Exchange Jetstress 2010 refer to Microsoft documentation:
Tools for performance and Scalability Evaluation , available at:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd335108.aspx