It’s been a few months since we announced some major changes to our virtualization support statements for Exchange 2010 (see Announcing Enhanced Hardware Virtualization Support for Exchange 2010). ...
Updated Jul 01, 2019
Version 2.0
Blog Post
Quick Followups I see in the comments:
Devin:
I'm not sure how VMware is an unaddressed 900lbs gorilla. You can hit the SVVP page linked, see VMware's support matrix and go from there and then every technology referenced form there on out is defined in the blog in general terms (and highlighted no less). Just "define" VMware HA/FT/Vmotion and it will become clear very quickly how it applies.
Kay:
To combine rolls in a VM you have to consider a couple of things. FIrst off every role has a cpu count requirement, usually easy to hit in the physical world due to multi-core systems and often impossible to hit in the virtual world due to vcpu limitations (until VSphere 5 or Hyper-V 3 at least).
CAS: 2 vcpu
HTS: 2 vcpu
MBX: 4 vcpu
These all require no more than 2:1 ratio vcpu/core. So we Add UM into the mix and you can do the math from there. In theory a single guest/vm with all roles on one would need 12vcpu, and no fewer than 8 cores worth of processors.
This of course ignores NUMA footprints which have a huge impact on memory performance and is another factor... not to mention vsphere licensing (cough cough)