Hello All..............I will be migrating Exchange Server 2010 to Exchange 2013.  The new Exchange 2013 will be highly available. Is it possible make high availability between a Physical and Virtual Server?

Yep.  Just make sure you meet all the requirements on the VM, both servers have the same specs and you test and you should be fine.

Hi Junkie,

Thank you for your question.

I agree with Hinte.

In official document, there are :

It's supported to create a DAG that contains a combination of physical Mailbox servers and virtualized Mailbox servers, provided that the servers and solution comply with the Exchange 2013 system requirements and the requirements set forth in Exchange 2013 virtualization. As with all Exchange high availability configurations, you must ensure that all Mailbox servers in the DAG are sized appropriately to handle the necessary workload during scheduled and unscheduled outages.

We could refer to the following link:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd979799(v=exchg.150).aspx

In addition, Exchange 2013 high availability could be referred by the following link:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd638129%28v=exchg.150%29.aspx

If there are any questions regarding this issue, please be free to let me know.

Best Regard,

Jim

Thanks for the reply; really appreciate.

I only asked because of difference in hardware that it would not cause any issues.  Plus, is not there any hard and fast rule for DAG Storage?  Can it be localized on both server?  Or do we need external storage?  Also, would this be a good desing? One physical and one virtual?

Hi,

It should work till you follow the requirements correctly, test the IOPS and other load testing prior to deploying the servers in production.

Here is the The Preferred Architecture for Ex2013:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2014/04/21/the-preferred-architecture.aspx

In the PA, all servers are physical, multi-role servers.(Virtualization adds an additional layer of management and complexity.)

It uses commodity hardware, storage JBODs (Localized) without the need to expensive SAN storage solu

Thanks for the reply.

So, we can conclude that Physical and Virtual both can work as well as there is no need of external storage to make the DAG run between the Physical and Virtual servers.  Kindly, confirm. 

Thanks; appreciate it.

Yes, provided you pass the Jetstress and LoadGen for Performance and Latency using that Setup.