Load simulations can be defined, based on usage scenarios intended to represent different types of "average" small businesses.
Small Business Server 2000 Beta 1 was tested by running load simulation tools for Exchange Server, SQL Server, and Microsoft Windows 2000 Server fax jobs on a Dell PowerEdge 2400 Server running Small Business Server 2000 Beta 1.

Performance was evaluated by response time to Exchange Server and SQL Server transactions, and by monitoring potential performance bottlenecks in the processor, memory, and disk I/O.
The simultaneous load was grouped into two categories. Each simulation placed a heavy workload in a simulated 10-user environment and a 50-user environment. The results are meant to be conservative, and define the peak utilisation of the business in which all 50 users are performing work on the server at the same time, performing different Exchange Server, SQL Server, and Windows 2000 Server tasks.

The results of these tests indicate that Small Business Server 2000 running on various configurations of a Dell PowerEdge 2400 is able to provide excellent performance to 50 users under simultaneously heavy load simulations of Windows 2000 Server, SQL Server, and Exchange Server.

Generally, the most heavily used resource during the tests was the disk I/O. One common misconception is that the best solutions to most resource problems include more RAM, a higher speed processor, or an additional processor. The best performance gains during the high-load scenarios can be realised with the hardware redundant array of independent disks (RAID) controller running at 512MB of RAM with one processor.
On the other hand, an additional processor produces the least incremental benefit based on these small business usage scenarios.

	10 users	25 users	50 users
Processor	400MHz or greater	500MHz or greater	600MHz or greater
Memory	256MB of RAM	384MB or more of RAM	512MB or more of RAM
Disk	small computer system interface (SCSI) controller 2 or more drives	SCSI or RAID controller 3 or more drives	RAID controller 3 or more drives

For 10-user and 25-user businesses with heavy SQL Server use and heavy file and print traffic, use the recommendations for the 50-user business.

• Load Simulation Scenarios
• Simulation Results
• Resource Utilisation Analysis
• Analysing Performance Data
• Results Analysis Template