Exchange & BES on Same Physical Server (VM'd)??

[virtual135]

So we are looking to implement redundant Disaster Recovery services to "mimic" our production environment. We have a standalone physical BES (4.1 / Win 2003) server and a standalone physical Exchange server (2003, Win 2003) in production. Roughly 10 users on Exchange, 9 on BES.

I was thinking instead of purchasing 2 physical servers for DR we could do 1 physical with 2 VMs. My question is if this can be done without problems putting BES and Exchange on the same physical server but 2 different VMs (I was thinking a DL380, 2 processors, quad nics...).

Any suggestions?

[juchestyle]

Hey Virtual135,

We are running BES on vm with 800 users. Our exchange is still on old school physicals, but we are planning on migrating those servers to vm as the hardware goes through its normal upgrade process.

With only 10 and 9 users, I don't think you will have any issues, but always get second opinions. By the way, your BES seems to be behind on revisions, isn't BES at 5.3 or something like that?

Respectfully,

Matthew

[virtual135]

Thanks,

Not to my knowledge, BES is on 4.1 SP 3 or so.

Anyway so it shouldn't be a prob running Exchange and BES on the same physical machine, but different VMs?

[VirtualNoitall]

Hello,

There is no problem with this configuration as long as the server can handle the combined load. BES is supported in virtual machines on ESX.

BES is not at 5.anything. BES is still in 4.x.

[juchestyle]

Yes you are correct, I misremembered our last upgrade for BES. Thank you for keeping me honest!

Respectfully,

Matthew

[TomHowarth]

my gut feeling is based on your user load, and the machine you are proposing, (I noted that you did not specify memory requirements - Remember get as much as you can) there should not be an issue form Memory or Processor, not too sure about disk I/O, so make sure that your disks are fast with plenty of spindles!

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