Provisioning Exchange 2016 on Vsphere 5.5

[Wajeeh]

Dear All,

We will provision exchange 2016 on vpshere 5.5, before we begin I am looking for suggestions for vmdk. We will be going with vmdk and as read should be thick type. But now in thick type, should go for eager or lazy zeroed. I read also that if you have eager zeroed disk and later you need to extend and if extension is performed using GUI the extended part will be lazy zeroed.

Please advise how to proceed considering of vmdk disk live extension in future since in exchange server, there are possibilities that you need to extend vmdk where information store for exchange are residing. Please don't provide with vmware best practice document for exchange, I am not clear when I read it.

Waiting for response.
Regards,

[vHaridas]

Go for eager zeroed thick disk and don't put all disk on same vSCSI controller, use multiple vSCSI.

See this post for more details -  ( this is not VMware's doc )

http://www.derekseaman.com/2013/08/vmword-2013-virtualize-microsoft-exchange-server.html

[Wajeeh]

Hello,

Thank you for response.

Can you also suggest me how to dynamically extend a eager zeroed disk, if required in near future because I was doing quick search about it and found that if the expansion of eager zeroed disk is done via GUI the added chunk is lazy zeroed.

By the way other the article you shared, do you personally think using a lazy zeroed will not suit exchange server considering that we are a mid size company.

Second, for vSCSI adapter, you mean the type of SCSI should be set to virtual instead of none? please see my attached screen shot and how to add other 3 vSCSI to this VM

Waiting for advise

Regards,

[vHaridas]

You need to use vmfstools command to extend eager zeroed disk with eager zeroed chunk. just be careful when using commands on CLI.

See this KB - VMware KB: Attempts to extend the size of an EagerZeroedThick VMDK from the vSphere Client might res...

Best practice is to use Eager zeroed thick virtual disks for exchange or any other production heavy load Servers.

later even if you increase these disk from GUI there should not be a problem even if new disk space is lazy zeroed.

vSCSI adapter -  Try to add different scsi controller for different purpose of disk

e.g. one SCSI controller 0 for OS Disk 0:0

SCSI controller 1 for Data Disk  1:0 ( using C# client, while adding new disk select scsi virtual device Node as 1:0 This will add new SCSI controller also)

Add another Data disk on 1:1

SCSI controller 2 for Logs disk 2:0 ( using C# client, while adding new disk select scsi virtual device Node as 2: This will add new SCSI controller also)

Like this you add new controllers based on number of disk you have and type IOs load each disk will have.

[Wajeeh]

Hello,

Thank you for explaining about vSCSI addition with different numbers for different type of disks. It is clear to me now about them.

With one of my test VM I created it with a eager zeroed disk, I powered it on and when in vSphere client, I right click > Edit for this virtual machine and see disk, it was showing me 'Eager zero', later I performed expansion from GUI again checked the type of disk, it started showing 'lazy zeroed', but like you mentioned even this is not a problem. I will also check the command line method.

Is there anything else you need to advise me?

regards,

[vHaridas]

Just make sure you have enough Memory, CPU for Prod VMs, no swapping, no ballooning.

[Wajeeh]

One more question, this extension requires to power Off the VM because the command not working when machine is in ON state, it says  Failed to lock the file,

[vHaridas]

that's correct.  you would have to use VI Client or web client to increase disk while VM is online.