Exchange 2003 VM and no support from Microsoft

[sinspot]

I was having a problem with my Exchange 2003 Server today and so I called Microsoft after I not being able to google the problem successfull. They had me run a couple of tools to gather log files and what not. One of them was a best practices program and at the end of the report it says VMware detected. After that I was told policy states that they don't support Exchange in a VM so he could not help me. I asked about the fact that Microsoft has a producted call Hyper-V and that if I was running that and had Exchange in that they would not be able to help me either? He told me that as of right now all he was being told is that Microsoft doesn't support Exhange in a VM.

Just an FYI I wanted to let everyone know.

Marty

[vmroyale]

Here is a link to the official non-Microsoft support policy.

Here is a link to the official Microsoft support policy.

[sinspot]

That kinda of confirms what I had thought they would support it under there own virtualization product but not under VMware and now they have a tester tool to tell them if it is running on VMware.

Marty

[vmroyale]

I wonder if you could use the Virtual Server Migration Toolkit (VSMT) and Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1

to get support?

[Speedbmp]

i've had to deal with Microsoft on an issue and the way i got around the problem was to uninstall the vmware tools. then the tool that they have you run "Best Practices Analyzer tool" will not see the VM.

thus problem solved.

Stephen

[sinspot]

oh really that is interesting so they are just checking for the tools. I was not sure if they were looking at drivers or .dll files.

I may give that a try.

Thanks

Marty

[Full_Halsey]

I have never been refused support from Microsoft for Exchange or SQL running on a VM. We have Exchange 2007 and SQL 2005 running as VMs. We have called Microsoft on various issues and the fact that it is a VM was never an issue. I have also had Exchange 2003 and SQL 2000 servers as VMs for several years prior to that. I'm sure there are others in the forum who can attest to this as well. I think the trick is the level of your partnership with Microsoft. We are a Gold level partner.

[jhanekom]

I think your MS support engineer was simply looking for an easy way out of the call, as that statement (about no support for Exchange in a virtual machine) is simply not true.

I attended a local Microsoft Tech-Ed event just last week where several Microsoft representatives (both from the Hyper-V camp and the Exchange camp) were proclaiming the opposite in official sessions. Even if you stretch the "commercially reasonable" bit VERY far in the direction of Microsoft, a response such as the one you describe is unreasonable and I would personally escalate the call to an account manager. (Of course, I don't know the exact circumstances or the nature of the problem, so I'm taking your view here.)

Also see this: http://blogs.technet.com/nmercer/archive/2008/06/26/microsoft-software-pss-supported-on-3rd-party-hy...

...and this: http://blogs.technet.com/scottschnoll/archive/2008/06/15/exchange-server-2007-and-hyper-v.aspx

The official support statement on Hyper-V (and hopefully more clarity on virtualisation in general) should be available by the end of the week, if Microsoft sticks to the timelines in the press releases. If you still don't have joy in solving the problem, try re-opening your case next week.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Moved to the VI: 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.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[sinspot]

If they update there stance I will do that. Sorry about having it in the wrong section.

Marty

[dwildey]

I had a problem with Exchange 2003 on a VM. Microsoft was working on the problem until I sent them a report from the BPA for Exchange. Once they saw that it was VMWare, they almost immediately suspended support and did not charge for the incident.

I have to wonder if it was not VMWare and was MS running an MS VM, if there would have been an exception? Very Disappointing since it had nothing to do with the problem. I figured it out so that we would not have to go back to physical as they requested.