Virtualizing Lync?

[JDLangdon]

Are there any best practice guides available for virtualizing Microsoft Lync?  I've got the Microsoft Whitepaper but that's written from a Hyper-V standpoint and a lot of there recommendations do not work in the VMware world.

Jason

[Gkeerthy]

Its all depend upon the storage and the pnics you have.

if you have 10gig ethernet, and vsphere ent+ license dedicate atleast 2 gig for the lync server networking by using NIOC.

if you have HP blades and flex nics, just give 2 gig bandwidth.

Use vmxnet3 for the vnics in the VM

Now storage..

Separate database and lync server,

For DB use pvscsi adapter, use sparate virtual scsi nodes for OS, DB data, DB logs,

For Mssql Database use RAID5 or RAID50

For Database logs use RAID10

Format the Database VM drives, with ntfs cluster size 64KB.

For DB give atleast 2 vCPU and give more RAM,

Put DB and Lync server VM in separate LUN.

These are all general very basic.. we use... I belive this will be enough. If you have specific capcity planning and load then share..we can discuss.

[michaelstump]

I think you'll want to prevent Lync VMs from vMotioning at all costs. A previous version (can't remember which, it was about 2 years ago) of Lync would lose all clients connections during a vMotion. Not sure if this is still the case, but something to be considered nonetheless.

mike

[Deji]

Please see Virtualizing Microsoft Lync Server – Let's Clear up the Confusion | Virtualize Business Cri...

Microsoft fully supports virtualizing all Lync components. VMware itself runs its corporate Lync infrastructure in virtual instances.