Two exchange boxes both virtualised. FC SAN. no issues. Looking at a upgrading other sites as well in the same frame
________________________________________ From: Fogarty, Richard R Mr CTR USA USASOC [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, 1 August 2008 10:38 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: VMWare and Exchange I've worked with the VMWare engineer. His statement was pretty much what I expected - he stated that the capacity planner usually is pretty much dead on for most people. Those numbers indicated no issues that we didn't expect. We analyzed the numbers of the IOPs and determined that a Fiber Channel environment would be better (as space wasn't really an issue for us) and decided upon that instead of ISCSI. I think the only issue that I can recall with MS clusters in a vmware environment was that iSCSI was not supported. That was one of the other reasons we went with FC. Still looking for stress testing our environment to get a more accurate picture.... -----Original Message----- From: Steven Peck [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 7:13 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: VMWare and Exchange Multiple sites. Largest site runs 4,000 mailboxes (users + resource) active/active/passive cluster, Hitachi SAN The SAN is shared across multiple resources through fiber switches. A load in one environment (SQL, FPS, etc) can have a significantly negative effect elsewhere. Not virtualized performance is barely acceptable and our SQL clusters (databases in the hundreds of GB and TB range) have to really watch disk IO as well. Mailbox size not really regulated by fiat. That's why I have the caveats about your environment being key. Checking your performance numbers in consideration with the VMware is crucial. Your size though should really get you a VMware engineer to personally chat with. We're being pushed in this direction as well but we would be switching back ends. Until I actually see what that will be I will remain somewhat cynical. :) I remember some reading some issues with running Microsoft clusters in virtualized environments but cannot find the references and it was a year or two ago I researched it so it may have changed since then. Steven On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Fogarty, Richard R Mr CTR USA USASOC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Care to share the size of your environment? > > -----Original Message----- > From: Steven Peck [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 5:28 PM > To: NT System Admin Issues > Subject: Re: VMWare and Exchange > > We have a test environment with Exchange clusters and it is very > sensitive and stops occasionally and is small (100 test users). I > doubt our production environment would survive virtualization with the > number of users we have. > > Search for 'VMware Dell Exchange white paper" and you will find the > white paper with information on Exchange 2003. VMware itself claims > to be running all their Exchange servers in a VMware environment (big > shock I know) and they are more then happy to provide access to > reps/engineers to talk about it pretty much anytime. > > I myself am not comfortable with the concept of running an Exchange > mailbox server on VMware due to disk i/o concerns in my environment > but yours may be different. Things I have heard about Exchange 2007 > will cause me to research that as a separate issue because the IO load > is supposed to have been significantly reduced so the impact will > probably be less. > > Any MS support concerns are a separate issue and for the most part can > be dealt with if you are of sufficiently sized support contract. > > Virtualization depends on your environment. There are to many test > environments alone out there proving it will work, it depends on will > it work in your environments supporting your users and their > expectations. > > Steven Peck > > On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 1:15 PM, Fogarty Richard MR - CONTR - Team > EITC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Has anyone virtualized their whole Exchange environment? Any issues? >> >> Has anyone had issue particularly with a backend box being virtualized? >> What about if it is clustered with MS Clustering services. >> >> >> >> Rick Fogarty >> Team EITC, Senior Systems Engineer >> Planning & Systems Engineering Coordinator >> US Army Special Operations Command >> (910) 396-0501 >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> >> [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> >> >> > > ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~ > > > ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~ > ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~ ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~ ~ Upgrade to Next Generation Antispam/Antivirus with Ninja! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbelt-software.com/SunbeltMessagingNinja.cfm> ~
