Exchange Server Jetstress 2013 Tool

Exchange JetStress 2013 has just been released and is available for download here! The changes are listed below, but the main ones include improved reports with Lost Flush* detection (an ESE improvement made in Exchange 2010 was the introduction of the Lost Flush detection mechanism which takes care of logical corruption) and a new option to allow JetStress to continue running even if a disk fails (obviously assuming there are other disks which JetStress is using) in order to support the “Storage Burn-in” scenario.

 

Overview

“Use Jetstress to verify the performance and stability of a disk subsystem prior to putting an Exchange server into production. Jetstress helps verify disk performance by simulating Exchange disk Input/Output (I/O) load. Specifically, Jetstress simulates the Exchange database and log file loads produced by a specific number of users. You use Performance Monitor, Event Viewer, and ESEUTIL in conjunction with Jetstress to verify that your disk subsystem meets or exceeds the performance criteria you establish. After a successful completion of the Jetstress Disk Performance and Stress Tests in a non-production environment, you will have ensured that your Exchange disk subsystem is adequately sized (in terms of performance criteria you establish) for the user count and user profiles you have established. It is highly recommended that the Jetstress user read through the tool documentation before using the tool.”

Improvements

• “Event log is captured and logged to the test log. Shows up on the Jetstress UI as the test is progressing;
• The error is counted against the volume it occurred on. The final report shows the counts in a new sub-section;
• A single IO error anywhere will fail the test. In case of CRC errors, they might be remapped. A re-run of Jetstress should verify that they indeed were remapped;
• Detects -1018, 1019, -1021, -1022, -1119, hung IO, DbtimeTooNew, DbtimeTooOld;
• Threads which generate IO are now controlled at a global level. Instead of specifying Threads/DB, you now specify a global thread count which work against all databases. This improves the granularity of thread tuning and enables automatic tuning to work more effectively;
• Jetstress config files generated from an older version of Jetstress are no longer allowed.”

Requirements

• .NET Framework 4.5
• Exchange 2013 binaries: ESE.DLL, ESEPerf.dll, ESEPerf.ini, ESEPerf.hxx
• VC11 runtime (I believe this is installed automatically, haven’t had the chance to test it)