Hi there, i would like to know if makes sense to virtualize our upcoming Exchange 2010 servers. We have currently 3300 mailboxes running on a Exchange 2007 CCR Cluster, two servers with CAS/Hub Transport Role installed and two with UM and Mailbox for Public Folders. All six servers have 2*Quadcore E5430 and 16GB Ram. All Data is stored on a Fibre Channel SAN. Now we want to migrate to Exchange 2010 and i wonder if it would fit if we virtualize it. We use VMware ESX 4.1 and have planned to deploy 2 Mailbox-Server with DAG, 2 CAS/Hub Transport Server with Windows NLB. The UM server isn't supported as i know, so that would be physical. Is that possible? How much resources do we need on the ESX side?

Hi You can virtualise Exchange and I'm assuming you have read the documentation for this on technet. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996719.aspx The key question I believe you want answerd is the resources you need for ESX to hanlde the Exchange deployment. This is a open question and to really get a good calculation you need to spend some time planning. You can use the mailbox calculator to help. http://blogs.technet.com/b/scottschnoll/archive/2010/01/22/exchange-2010-mailbox-server-role-requirements-calculator-v3-2-available.aspx But what you really need to do is gather metrics on usage for your current users and your Exchange resources and then plan your resources for Exchange. Depends how deep you want to go, i.e do you want to validate our storage, measure IOPS, latency, etc... Some guidance. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd346700.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd298121.aspx Sukh

Hi, According to TechNet documents, we known all Exchange 2010 server roles, except for the Unified Messaging server role, are supported in a virtualization environment. So it is possible. For the second question, I think you could get it via Exchange 2010 Mailbox Performance testing You could get more information at Center Virtual Machine Manager forum. System Center Virtual Machine Manager: http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/default.aspx?ForumGroupID=489&SiteID=17Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Use the Exchange 2010 Mailbox role storage calculator. Remember that in virtualized environments you a generally limited in how many cores you can give to a VM. The calculator will tell you how many cores and how much RAM you'll need give your desire for a 2 node DAG. If it fits, it could make sense to virtualize the mailbox role. For the HUB/CAS, that's pretty much a no brainer. You should be able to easily fit in the cores/RAM available in VMs. For the UM role, today you cannot virtualize UM so that will be a physical. J

Above have been given excellent information. Also you can use UM BOX for one DAG node also as the UM role is supported collocated with any other Exchange Server role. The clustering collocation limitation has been removed in Exchange 2010 and you can collocate mailbox servers in a DAG with any other Exchange Server role, including UM. For testing your VMware performace you can use "LOadGen" also for test the load for 3300 mailbox. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=cf464be7-7e52-48cd-b852-ccfc915b29efAnil