Size It! with the SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool

Last week, Microsoft released the beta of the SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool. The tool's name says it all. Instead of wading through the capacity-planning documentation, you can get a rough idea of your hardware needs and farm topology design. Just enter information such as the number of users, locations, bandwidth and network topology, preferred hardware, and usage profiles. To get the tool, go to the Microsoft's Connect site (http://connect.microsoft.com), sign up for a Connect account if you don't have one already, and follow the instructions on that page. And, by all means, provide your feedback. The team responsible for this tool is a great group of folks who want this tool, and the others that are on the way, to be truly useful to you. The tool is a beta, and it's just a tool not an experienced integrator with a brain, but it's a welcome addition to the arena of capacity planning, where HP has had a tool available for some time now. Take its results with a grain of salt, but its a worthy grain of salt.  I am told that we can expect the final (and significantly beefier) version early summer.