We've had a number of customers ask us whether or not we support virtualized Exchange Server 2010 deployments. The answer is firmly, YES! We know there are many customers running on under-utilize...
Updated Jul 01, 2019
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Answering Exchange Virtualization Questions and Addressing Misleading VMware Guidance
@bday
Actually, they never suggest using 'VMotion' or 'DRS' with DAGs (only with standalone mailbox servers which I believe is still supported by Microsoft).
You are correct they are 'suggesting' that HA may work. Like you said "Ignoring for a moment MS doesn't support hypervisor HA with DAGs": Conceptually, I can see where one could conclude that HA is really no different than something like an ASR technology on hardware. If some sort of hardware problem occurs that causes the machine to ASR, a 'physical' DAG node will simply restart and begin resyncing from another DAG node. I'm assuming there is nothing wrong with that scenario, so I'm not sure of any 'technical' reason Microsoft couldn't support 'basic' HA failover of a VM guest DAG node.
With that said, I totally can understand why it wouldn't be supported at this point as it certainly could increase complexity for many customers. Also, the guidelines for supporting this configuration would probably be very complex, not to mention potential licensing implications.
Great conversation topic!
AK
Actually, they never suggest using 'VMotion' or 'DRS' with DAGs (only with standalone mailbox servers which I believe is still supported by Microsoft).
You are correct they are 'suggesting' that HA may work. Like you said "Ignoring for a moment MS doesn't support hypervisor HA with DAGs": Conceptually, I can see where one could conclude that HA is really no different than something like an ASR technology on hardware. If some sort of hardware problem occurs that causes the machine to ASR, a 'physical' DAG node will simply restart and begin resyncing from another DAG node. I'm assuming there is nothing wrong with that scenario, so I'm not sure of any 'technical' reason Microsoft couldn't support 'basic' HA failover of a VM guest DAG node.
With that said, I totally can understand why it wouldn't be supported at this point as it certainly could increase complexity for many customers. Also, the guidelines for supporting this configuration would probably be very complex, not to mention potential licensing implications.
Great conversation topic!
AK