Virtualization - Exchange 2007 on VMware
DELL-ToddM Hello Everybody
Mark_Overbeck Hola
DELL-ScottH Hola
DELL-ToddM Let's wait for a few more minutes to let others join
bradys joined.
DELL-ToddM Hello bradys
bradys Good afternoon
DELL-ToddM While are waiting to for others to join - do you have any specific questions / topics that you want to cover today?
bradys mainly interested to hear about recent developments in virtualization that Dell is seeing; no specific questions at this time
DELL-ToddM I had planned to talk about running Exchange in Vms - but we can talk more generally
DELL-ScottH which company are you with ? what are you doing with virtualization on dell today ?
bradys I was involved in a Vmware project two years back but it's been awhile; am interested in watching from the sidelines and soaking it all in at this stage.
DELL-ToddM I have done some testing with Exchange 2007 on Vmware Esx Server to measure two things:
DELL-ToddM 1) What is the performance of Exchange server within a Vm? Can it handle a reasonable number of users? Does it provide good response time?
DELL-ToddM 2) Can you use the virtualization features of Esx with an Exchange Server Vm and experience no ill effects? Does Vmotion work well with Exchange Vms? What abou Vmware High Availability?
DELL-ToddM In terms of performance I tested 500, 1000, and 2000 users cases.
DELL-ToddM In order to size the Vms - that is decide how much Ram and disks to use - I used the physical server sizer
DELL-ToddM It is located at http://www.dell.com/exchange
DELL-ToddM In testing I found that performance across all three sizes was good, with response times for users remaining below 1 second in most cases.
DELL-ToddM While the response times for an Exchange server running on a physical server are lower than what was observed with the Vms, the difference is not by an amount that is noticeable
DELL-ToddM The performance of the 500 and 1000 user Vms was slightly better, when using 1vcpu and 2vcpu, respectively
DELL-ToddM Some one conclusion was that to optimize performance - you should only use the amount of processors that are really needed.
DELL-ToddM Complete whitepaper with all details on performance is located on the wiki at: http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/exchange+and+vmware
DELL-ScottH bradys, if you are looking to catch back up from the sidelines, I'd recommend checking out our papers -- http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/virtualization+whitepapers and the demos we do -- http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/virtualization+demos
DELL-ScottH that should help get you back up to speed, and of course we are always here to help !
bradys that's great...thanks very much Scott!
bradys and Todd!
DELL-ToddM In terms of using Vmotion and Vmware - I did a second whitepaper on that - located on the same wiki page.
DELL-ToddM Basically found that when doing Vmotion to move a Vm from one server to another or Vmware High Availability to quickly recover Vms when a server goes down -
DELL-ToddM That smaller Vms are better
DELL-ToddM Becuase they can be moved and recovered faster.
DELL-ToddM All in all - you can run Exchange 2007 in a Vm with good performance while taking advantage of Vmotion and Ha features
DELL-ToddM Now the big question that I always get is - Is it supported?
DELL-ToddM And the answer today is - No, not offically.
DELL-ToddM Microsoft does not offically support it - although they will provide best effort, but may require any issue to be reproduced on physical servers
DELL-ScottH I'm going to ask an opinion question .... do you think Microsoft is more apt to support it once Hyper-v comes out ?
DELL-ScottH Todd just hit me in the side of the head :-)
DELL-ToddM I haven't heard what Microsoft is going to do in terms of support, but I would guess that they will provide more support for their apps on Hyper-v - when it comes out.
DELL-ToddM I don't know when / if that will include Exchange 2007
DELL-ToddM I also don't know when / if they will support it on Vmware
DELL-ToddM I have talked to many customers who are running Exchange 2007 in Vms
DELL-ToddM Typically it is in smaller sized deployments - under 1000 users
DELL-ToddM They have told me that they employ the don't ask, don't tell policy when calling into Microsoft for support
DELL-ToddM They don't say they are running it in a Vm, if Microsoft doesn't ask
DELL-ScottH bradys, any general questions on any topic you'd like to bring up ?
DELL-ToddM Thanks for comming to the Tech Tues Chat!
DELL-ToddM For next week's chat we will be returning to Openmanage!