After you have installed Microsoft Exchange Server, balancing your server's hardware resources is an essential step in optimizing your system's performance. Because a server's hardware resources work together to accomplish tasks, it's not always easy to determine what resource is the performance bottleneck. Even if your server appears to be using one hardware resource inefficiently, another resource can actually be at fault. For example, if your server's disk is thrashing due to excessive paging, the server needs more memory, not a larger disk. For information about using Performance Monitor to help detect bottlenecks, see Chapter 12, "Troubleshooting."
The four main hardware resources to consider when you are balancing hardware resources to optimize server performance are:
Guidelines for minimizing bottlenecks in these resources are described in the following sections.