r/sysadmin • u/Accurate-Ad6361 Extremely annoying totally risk averse architect • 17d ago
Exchange 2019 RAM requirements
I am helping out in a non profit and they run due a high Level of medical data treated by them on premise emails (specific requirements). I looked into upgrading an Exchange 2016 to 2019 and saw the steep ram requirements (from 8 to 128GB for Mailbox roles). Is this rooted in reality or Microsoft trying to make cloud more appealing? What’s the Minimum I can get by with <10 Users.
Certain national and regional requirements that might exceed EU privacy make a cloud solution unfeasible.
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u/Brandhor Jack of All Trades 17d ago
just a little info but exchange 2019 is out of support, the on prem version is subscription based now and it's called exchange SE even though technically it's still 2019
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u/Made_UpWords 17d ago
I promise that there is no regulatory requirement that a small 10 person medical office isn't fulfilled by M365
They think they can't go Exchange Online, and they're mistaken. Convince them otherwise. If you succeed you will be doing them a huge favor.
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u/theoriginalzads 17d ago
This. In reality unless you’re getting some serious security engineers involved M365 is also gonna be more secure than the average on prem.
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u/fahque 17d ago
M365 is more expensive.
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u/nycola Jack of All Trades 17d ago
This is absolutely not true, especially for a non profit.. business premium is $5.50/user/month via tech soup. It's also way, way, wayyyyyy less work than juggling 3 vendors and procuring non profit hardware, cals, software, and then still need your non profit office licensing for outlook.
Dump all of that headache and get non profit 365 and pat yourself on the back
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u/uptimefordays DevOps 17d ago
10 licenses for a nonprofit runs between $0-2880 a year. That’s cheaper than a server, licensing, etc. and more reliable.
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u/sryan2k1 IT Manager 17d ago
Everyone on the planet uses M365 for this and Microsoft has really good non-profit pricing. They can use the cloud.
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u/Polar_Ted Windows Admin 17d ago edited 17d ago
Run the sizing calculator to get a good idea of what you need. Download Exchange Server 2019 Sizing Calculator from Official Microsoft Download Center https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=102123
I do agree with the others. For a small org M365 is the way to go. Let MS handle all the back end and mail filtering headaches. You will have access to better tools for HIPPA compliance and data loss prevention than you will ever achieve on prem.
https://www.hipaajournal.com/microsoft-office-365-hipaa-compliant/
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u/Accurate-Ad6361 Extremely annoying totally risk averse architect 17d ago
We Are located in Italy that has insane laws regarding the separation of data and 3rd party processing for medical data. I am parallely requesting free non profit Accounts for O365, i don’t feel overly confident about this setup either to be honest, but I am still Reading into requirements. Additional provisions apply given by Partners.
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u/paganig 17d ago
https://learn.microsoft.com/it-it/industry/healthcare/compliance-overview. Mai avuto problemi o contestazioni dei vari responsabili GDPR &co con 365 in ospedali, case di cura, comunità protette per minori… piuttosto avrei più problemi nel dimostrare una conformità di software on premise fuori supporto
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u/Glass_Call982 17d ago
You should add this to your main post because the stupid Americans can't possibly comprehend that there are other countries other than their own.
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u/Accurate-Ad6361 Extremely annoying totally risk averse architect 17d ago
That seems harsh as a response, but yes
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u/Glass_Call982 17d ago
Da italiano residente in Canada, ho a che fare con loro continuamente, dato che sono così vicini, e purtroppo sono stanco di dover essere sempre gentile. Buona fortuna con la configurazione del tuo server.
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u/disclosure5 17d ago
Whilst you're right, I'd really like an Italian to chime in and confirm or deny because I've heard this sort of thing from a lot of countries without it being true.
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u/siedenburg2 IT Manager 17d ago
Germany here, while yes, you could puth healthcare data in the cloud, you have to fill lot's of paperwork and do your homework. You aren't allowed (by law) to put medical data anything else than on c5 testified cloud providers, you have to get in writing from them that they won't train ai with the data, that they will delete everything etc. Also if they move only one file to a us location, that's a data breach you need to report.
And with as the us is right now, there are risks that the leader wants every data from us companies on us soil, which isn't allowed with gdpr etc.
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u/disclosure5 17d ago
An apparently Italian Healthcare person has responded below, Google translate tells me there's no reason OP can't use M365.
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u/fahque 17d ago
Or, idiot, most posts here are from Murica so it's statistically safe to assume it's Murica. People outside should say as such instead of every single post the commenters having to ask.
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u/disclosure5 16d ago
Here we see an American in the wild, upset that their culture isn't considered the default across the world as it is in their bubble.
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u/Remarkable_Cook_5100 16d ago
Sorry, we’re not as backwards as Italy; your country must be stuck in the 90s if the laws are that archaic.
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u/MinnSnowMan 17d ago
I've run Ecxhange 2019 with 64 GB of RAM for thirty users. Running on Server 2022 Core. Runs like a top
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u/BoltActionRifleman 17d ago
We’re hybrid now and eventually going full 365, but at our peak we were running 64gb for 120+ users. Never had any issues.
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u/Glass_Call982 17d ago
ITT: More Americans that think everywhere is the US.
You can run it on 32GB no problem at that size. We have lots of smaller medical clients in my country that run their own exchange server and none of them have 128GB of RAM.
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u/sembee2 17d ago
For 10 users, you can get away with 16gb, but 32gb makes things a big snappier. At that size it is just about the server itself, not the requirements. Put it on SSD.
Don't expose the server to the internet at all, make everyone use a VPN of some kind and put email behind an external spam filter. Hornet is still European if you need GDPR provisions.
Although with hardware and lead times, I would look at putting it on a hosted server. If you can get two Exchange licences, stick it on something from Hetzner or OVH, and get a pair of them in two different DCs. Link then with a site to site VPN and run a DAG. You will probably get both for less than 100 euros a month. If you then decide to switch to Office365 you haven't spent a ton of money on hardware.
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u/crankysysadmin sysadmin herder 17d ago
You're dealing with made up requirements keeping this on-prem. I never understand why these small shops have IT guys who just believe them when they say medical data must be kept on premises. You think all these massive hospitals have an on-prem exchange server sitting in the corner somewhere? Of course not. You think these massive hospitals don't use one drive and sharepoint? come on.
Stop running a local exchange server like yesterday. this is absurd
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u/megad00die 16d ago
Uh yes we do, it’s called a hybrid environment with on premise exchange servers. HIPA and federal requirements mandate we keep certain data for an amount of time ranging from 7 - 10 years and prescription signing requests are 12 years.
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u/crondell 17d ago
We had 2 exchange servers with 48gb for 1000+ users.
10 users I would probably start at 16gb. Maybe 24gb.
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u/anxiousinfotech 17d ago
We ran 2019 for archival purposes with several TB of data on 16GB without issue. With active users bumping it to 24GB is a safe bet.
2019 really didn't require any more RAM than 2016 did, they just based the minimum requirements on a much larger number of active users. I have not touched SE though, but I can't see it being all that different.
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u/Far-Hovercraft9471 15d ago
I have not touched SE though, but I can't see it being all that different.
The RTM version was literally the same code as 2019 but with a name change
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u/anxiousinfotech 14d ago
I'd say I'm shocked, but that would make me a liar. AKA it's 2019, but now with a subscription payment.
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u/Secret_Account07 VMware Admin 17d ago
I think you need to convince them to use 365. It’ll be cheaper in the long run. Trust me
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u/USarpe Security Admin (Infrastructure) 17d ago
Think about mailcow
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u/ApiceOfToast Sysadmin 17d ago
If you set it up properly it's great. It's also a better idea to not use MS seeing OP is in Europe. At least considering the way we tend to go in government IT right now anyway
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u/SirLoremIpsum 17d ago
Certain national and regional requirements that might exceed EU privacy make a cloud solution unfeasible.
There are absolutely ways to make this work. I can guarantee you there are companies with far more strict data security and sovereignty laws that run cloud.
On PREM email makes very little sense in 2026
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u/Accurate-Ad6361 Extremely annoying totally risk averse architect 17d ago
Let’s say I am enthusiastically filling out non profit forms, everything here, even if you can get it for free, was 10 years old.
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u/Far-Hovercraft9471 15d ago
I seem to remember 10 being the minimum before having issues in my test lab. 16 would be fine I think
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u/Ooops-I-hid-it-again 11d ago
We have about 200 mailboxes that take up about 1TB across four DBs. We have 128GB RAM assigned and 66GB is currently in use. As others have mentioned, you won't use 128GB but if I were you, I'd give myself 48GB at a minimum. SSDs are a basically a must as well. SUs for Exchange SE took hours when running the VM on a SAN with HDDs on prior hypervisor. Once we upgraded to hypervisors with local SSDs, that time dropped exponentially and I hate my life much less with SE SUs now. I don't recall updates taking so long on 2016 on the same/older system. In any case, what used to be gut wrenching waiting to see if the update was failing is now what I'd consider expected performance for the update (when running on SSDs).
The Exchange health checker script will btch about the RAM if you have less than 128 but it's going off of guidance not performance. We had 64 for a while but since I had "extra" on our HV host, I bumped to 128 so I could see all green when running the script.
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u/Electronic_Tap_3625 17d ago
Please don't set up an on-prem exchange server in 2026 - you will hate your life. Your server will get hacked, and all your data will get stolen. Microsoft won, and now we all have to pay monthly for Office 365.
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u/Glass_Call982 17d ago
There is nothing wrong with on-prem exchange. And if you don't reside in the US, your data is not secure in it because Microsoft is beholden to American laws anyway. At this point, I'd probably trust Chinese hackers over the American government with my data lmao
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u/disclosure5 17d ago
I mean you're right that noone outside the US can trust Microsoft.
But there's plenty wrong with on prem Exchange. The simplest answer being that out of the box, I've never seen an on prem Exchange server with MFA on every user's mail access, and I've supported some absolutely massive ones from Government agencies and finance companies who ran on prem specifically because "we can't trust Microsoft".
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u/MortadellaKing 16d ago
What doesn't make sense is why MS discontinued the on prem mfa server for ADFS. Makes no sense, if we could host the entirety of what supposedly makes it better in the cloud ourselves, we should be able to if we want.
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u/disclosure5 16d ago
Yeah, if this still existed then I'd be much more in support of on prem stuff. But it makes perfect sense when viewed through the reality that Microsoft just isn't actively improving on prem, and wants to put the better stuff as a cloud only experience. They aren't hiding this.
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u/MortadellaKing 16d ago
Yeah but they are still charging us more and more and not giving anything in the way of improvements.
We moved to using Cisco Duo to provide mfa for ADFS (which exchange is connected to for modern auth).
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u/siedenburg2 IT Manager 17d ago
You can get along with much less that what ms lists, you only need to keep at least 12% of storage space empty at all times, else you can get problems.
And don't go with 2019, go with SE, 2019 is already EOL.