I just fired up the capacity planning tool that’s all the rage these days. 

I found it easy to use and quickly modeled a client environment I worked on this past summer.

With some trepidation, I pressed the final OK button and it recommended something that is pretty similar to what we gave our client (we actually threw in a second application server for future excel use).  I take that to be a good sign and increases my confidence in the tool.

It seems pretty powerful stuff a much better starting point than a blank page.

I like that lets you get into some good detail about the environment.  How many users, how you project they will use the system (publishing, collaboration, etc), branch office and connectivity / network capacity between them and the mama server.  Good stuff.

It asks broad based questions and then lets you tweak the details for a pretty granular model of your environment.

I hesitated downloading it because I have so many other things to look at it, read and try to digest.  I’m glad I did.

It’s an easy two-step process.  Download system center capacity planner and then download the SharePoint models.  It runs nicely on Windows XP.

Based on my quick impression, I don’t see how it might account for:

• Search: Total documents, maybe types of documents, languages.
• Excel server: how much, if at all?
• Forms server: how much, if at all?
• BDC: how much, if at all.

Those may be modeled and I just didn’t see them in the 10 minute review.

I will definitely use it at my next client.

If I were not a consultant and instead working for a real company :), I’d model my current environment and see how the tool’s recommended model matches up against reality.  That would be pretty neat.  It could lead to some good infrastructure discussion.

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