Exchange 2010

[Rohail2004]

Is anyone using Exchange 2010 in ESXi 4.1? we are thinking to do it, but want to check if someone out there already running it w/o an issue.  Our hardware will have 32 cores, 10gb backbone, 8vCPus, and 32GB RAM on a VAM.

Any suggestions would be highly appreicated..  thanks

[MauroBonder · Accepted solution]

VMware maintains a team of dedicated performance that keeps a blog called VROOM! (http://blogs.vmware.com/performance/) . This  time with a frequency analysis applications and publishes the results  of their study - which has been very useful in that it is planning to  virtualize mission critical applications. The turn is Exchange 2010.

 

What is the optimal size of a VM running Exchange 2010? 2 vCPUs? What is the impact on response time to add one more vCPU? This type of information you find in Exchange 2010 Scale-Up Performance on vSphere. http://blogs.vmware.com/performance/2010/05/exchange-2010-scaleup-performance-on-vsphere.html

 

To  get an idea of how Exchange 2010 servers with virtualized behave with  respect to storage, see Exchange 2010 Disk I / O on vSphere. http://blogs.vmware.com/performance/2010/05/exchange-2010-disk-io-on-vsphere.html

 

More on page on virtualized Exchange. http://www.vmware.com/solutions/business-critical-apps/exchange/

[VMmatty]

I've worked with many different organizations that have virtualized Exchange 2010 on both ESX and ESXi so I have concerns there.  There are several great VMware blog posts (linked above) that you should read.

Don't forget that you should size the Exchange 2010 VM based on Microsoft best practices for CPU/core sizing based on your design.  Lots of good stuff on Technet, including these two:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd346700.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd346699.aspx

Making sure you size it properly will help it perform well and you won't use extra resources by oversizing it.  The other thing you should make sure is that you stick with what is supported by VMware and Microsoft.  Things like DRS/HA setup, etc.  Here's a blog post I wrote on the subject of sticking with what is supported:  http://www.thelowercasew.com/right-or-wrong-go-with-whats-supported

In general I think Exchange 2010 runs really well when virtualized on vSphere and as long as you stick to the proper sizing and supported configurations you should have a great experience.

Best of luck..

Matt