ok I found a doc that says exchange is officially supported within a vm and yet I still see people saying that it's not, so is it or not. btw the doc states that it's supported is for e2k3sp2 and above so does that include e2k7sp1?thanks

Hi Troth, Unfortunately your question is more complicated than it seems on the surface. Now first off I personally do not think that exchange is very well suited for virtualization, however cost-effectiveness and support are two different issues. Exchange 2007 is not supported as x86, which reduces your virtualization options (Virtual Server only virtualizes x86, Hyper-V is still PreRelease, so neither of these would be supported). So based on this if you were virtualizing x64 on VMWare then you should be good to go. Now when it comes to practicality I would only do this if you have a SAN from which you can pull storage for the exchange databases. -matt

so once hyper-v is release we'll be good to go.. and I thought that ms was hyping e2k7sp2's with DAS latelyand with the hyper-v's scsi implementation the performance should be very good, at least thats what I think I hear from ms, anyway the site only has 200 medium users so we should be good anyway right? thanks

Hi, Neither Exchange2007 nor Exchange2007 SP1 is supported in production in a virtual environment. However, as stated previously, Microsoft Virtual Server is a good environment for training, labs, and demos. Exchange2007 and Exchange2007 SP1 are supported in production environments using only the 64-bit version of Exchange2007, and currently neither Microsoft Virtual Server nor Microsoft Virtual PC supports 64-bit guest systems. Exchange2007 and Exchange2007 SP1 are also not supported in production in a virtual environment using virtualization software that is not Microsoft software. For details about the Microsoft support policy for third-party virtualization software, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 897615, Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software. The first 64-bit guest support is expected to be included with Hypervisor, which is an add-in for WindowsServer2008 from Microsoft that is scheduled to ship within 180 days of WindowsServer2008. Note that this is within 180 days, meaning it could ship the same day asWindowsServer2008, or it could ship 180 days after WindowsServer2008 ships. For more information about Microsoft virtualization plans, see the Microsoft Machine Virtualization Roadmap Chat Transcript. More information share with you: Exchange Server 2007: Platforms, Editions, and Versions-Exchange 2007 and Virtualization http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb232170(EXCHG.80).aspx Hope it helps. Xiu

Hi, Hyper-V has RTMed and will be available to public download in July. Best regards, Xiu

yep saw that will start testing!