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Begin capacity analysis and performance optimization sooner rather than later.
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Create performance baselines in which to gauge the changing requirements and performance levels of Exchange Server 2003.
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Establish SLAs and other policies that reflect the business expectations of the messaging environment.
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Monitor only those counters that are pertinent to the server's configuration.
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Always monitor the four common contributors to bottlenecks : memory, disk subsystem, processor, and network.
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Run performance and stress tests in a lab environment prior to implementing in a production environment.
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Establish regular maintenance routines, including those for offline maintenance tasks .
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Set an alert for Event ID 9582 to proactively address any memory or virtual memory problems.
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Use the /3GB /USERVA=3030 parameters in boot.ini for any Exchange Server 2003 server with 1GB of memory or more installed.
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Keep Exchange Server 2003 database sizes in the 10 “20GB range whenever possible.
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Use separate, hardware-based RAID 1 volumes for system files and transaction logs.