Virtualise Exchange 2010, OK let’s do it

One of the questions I’m asked more than any other when teaching the Microsoft Exchange course is.

“Can I virtualise Exchange Server 2010?”

My answer is always “Yes”.

I’ve done it quite a few times now and every time it has been successful. Really what it all comes down to is planning and ensuring that you take your time, and that you decide whether you want to consolidate all roles into one server, or split the roles. This will affect performance.

Both VMware and Microsoft produce some fantastic guides to doing just this.

The VMware guide can be found at

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/exchange-2010-on-vmware-best-practices-guide.pdf

Microsoft’s guide can be found at

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=2428

I’ve used both this guides, I’ve virtualised Exchange on VMware ESXi and also on Hyper-V.

The other question is which one does it best, and the answer is “                 “, sorry the keyboard has gone faulty, the answer is, really it depends on what you’ve got, so do you have ESXi? If the answer yes then this is the best product. Do you have Hyper-V? Then this is the best product.

In my experience, both do the job well.