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ThomasBoDa
Contributor
Contributor

Clustering 2008 64bit and Exchange 2007 with CCR on vmware, possible?

We are currently planning to move from 1 physical Exchange2003 to a virtualized cluster solution, and i can't found any good documentation about the solution we want:

- 2 Windows 2008 Enterprise (64bit) servers clustered with CCR and Exhange 2007 SP1 on 2 different ESX Hosts

We are currently running ESX 3.5 (u2, but can upgrade to u3 if needed) with a HP EVA 6000 San connected.

Have anyone actually tried this solution before? or is anyone running something similear on a production enviroment?

About all the documentation i can find from vmware is about MSCS cluster and not CCR, as CCR is not shared disk it should not have the same limitations?

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8 Replies
dmn0211
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I am not an exchange expert, but check out this set of resources.

Thanks!

ThomasBoDa
Contributor
Contributor

hmm, please delete this post.. it seems that the mail address registred for our vmtn user has a auto respond feature activated.

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msemon1
Expert
Expert

Yes, it is possible. We are currently implementing Exchange 2007 on Windows 2008 with CCR. We have one of the CCR nodes on one ESX host and the other on another host. VMotion is not enabled between the two ESX hosts.

The key is planning and setting up your storage. We have 15 mapped raw LUN's for storage. The Hub Transport and Client access servers are on another cluster and are allowed to be VMotioned.

Mike

abaum
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Yes...We are doing the exact same thing with an EVA6000. You have to use CCR because ESX does not currently support SCSI-3 reservations, which is a requirement for W2K8 clustering.

We didn't disable VMotion on our hosts, but we did create a DRS rule that keeps the two guests separate. We have anumber of other guests running on our hosts so we didn't want to take away a key feature.

adam

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Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership

Hello,

Moved to Virtual Machine and Guest OS forum.


Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

Blue Gears and SearchVMware Pro Blogs: http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Blog_Roll

Top Virtualization Security Links: http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Top_Virtualization_Security_Links

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
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ThomasBoDa
Contributor
Contributor

Thansk for the information so far, it has been helpful.

Some more questions then:

- How did you guy set up your OS disk? (vmdk?, boot from san?, other?)

- Is snapshot supported? (or have you tested it?)

- Have you tried to make a failover situation to see how the OS and Exchange reacts, for example, cutting the power to one of the ESX hosts?

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msemon1
Expert
Expert

Our OS disks are VMDK., C: and 😧 drive. All other for storage are raw device mappings. We have not tested snapshots, however, failover testing works fine in powering down one of the VM's. Have not tried powering down host.

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jsenter
Contributor
Contributor

How are you handling the Private network connection for the cluster? I only see 2 ways: 1) dedicate a nic in the physical to go to a hub or crossover; 2) use a regular IP.

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