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
Version 2.0
Blog Post
3 MIN READ
Answering Exchange Virtualization Questions and Addressing Misleading VMware Guidance
To Paul G:
"The ONLY valid reason for Microsoft not to support something is if it doesn't work or is unreliable. To not support a feature implementation because of cost is like saying that they won't support Intel processors because AMD processors are cheaper and sufficient for the workload."
So you're saying Microsoft has to support and test everything in the world (everything that uses their products), unless it doesn't work!? What about combinations of things that work independently and break each other? Do you realise that Microsoft and VMWare may BOTH refuse to support clusters on clusters? It's in the VMWare documentation, you know. Your comparison is invalid too but I think you know that anyway.
Also take a look at the best practices guide. 4,000 users, with 2GB quotas, on ~130 x 300GB 10K FC disks. That could be supportable on non-RAID SATA 1TB disks, >200 users per disk, that's 80 database disks. Say 240 drives maximum, if you had 3 copies. The SATA will likely still be cheaper to buy, plus you get lagged copies and the DAG (HA+) effectively for free.
So let's recognise that the VMWare document is just as biased as the Microsoft one.
Also ... does no-one else have any VMWare DRS/VMotion horror stories? I sure do (incl on sites designed, configured and supported by VMWare PS themselves). There's definitely a higher chance of stuff going bad when you add more layers. It doesn't matter where those layers are.
"The ONLY valid reason for Microsoft not to support something is if it doesn't work or is unreliable. To not support a feature implementation because of cost is like saying that they won't support Intel processors because AMD processors are cheaper and sufficient for the workload."
So you're saying Microsoft has to support and test everything in the world (everything that uses their products), unless it doesn't work!? What about combinations of things that work independently and break each other? Do you realise that Microsoft and VMWare may BOTH refuse to support clusters on clusters? It's in the VMWare documentation, you know. Your comparison is invalid too but I think you know that anyway.
Also take a look at the best practices guide. 4,000 users, with 2GB quotas, on ~130 x 300GB 10K FC disks. That could be supportable on non-RAID SATA 1TB disks, >200 users per disk, that's 80 database disks. Say 240 drives maximum, if you had 3 copies. The SATA will likely still be cheaper to buy, plus you get lagged copies and the DAG (HA+) effectively for free.
So let's recognise that the VMWare document is just as biased as the Microsoft one.
Also ... does no-one else have any VMWare DRS/VMotion horror stories? I sure do (incl on sites designed, configured and supported by VMWare PS themselves). There's definitely a higher chance of stuff going bad when you add more layers. It doesn't matter where those layers are.