Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner 2007 helps size and plan deployments of Microsoft server products, including Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. It provides you with the tools and guidance to simplify deployment planning, and use "what-if" analyses to predict the impact of change in the following ways:

• Help to ensure the success of supported Microsoft server products such as Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: Plan the correct amount of infrastructure needed for a new application to meet service level goals.
• Infrastructure planning and optimization: Plan ahead for IT purchases, to optimize cost.
• Proactive performance planning: Helping an organization meet their service level goals consistently, now and in the future.
• Performance analysis and predictive reporting: Automatically report performance trends and bottlenecks to manage current and future performance issues.

System Center Capacity Planner 2007 is designed to help you create a system architecture model for deploying a Microsoft server application, such as Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Capacity planning models for Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 are available as separate downloads. A typical system architecture model consists of the following information:

• Topology: Site locations, types of networks, network components, and network characteristics (bandwidth, latency).
• Hardware: Server distribution and characteristics, server and network mapping.
• Software: Server role and service mapping, file and storage device mapping.
• Usage profiles: Site usage and client usage.

After you create a model, you can run a simulation that provides a summary and details about the performance of the application and its supporting components.