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Thread ID: 97052 2009-02-02 20:22:00 Virtualising Exchange (Sol?) nofam (9009) Press F1
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744254 2009-02-02 20:22:00 I'm pitching the purchase of an Exchange server for our company (currently POP'ing mail from our Support Centre in Aklnd), and was wondering how viable it is to virtualise an Exchange server? We have a relatively small number of users for Exchange (I'd estimate around 60 mailboxes), but my understanding is that Exchange is quite heavy on I/O? We also have an aging IBM x346 Terminal Server which potentially could be virtualised on the same new box as Exchange. The x346 also acts as our Domain Controller/DHCP server/File Server for thick clients - these functions could either remain on the hardware, or be moved to the new server.

Is any of this viable? Or is virtualising Exchange/Terminal Services bad practice?

:thumbs:
nofam (9009)
744255 2009-02-03 07:50:00 yup this is totally viable although you are totally right in thinking that I/O is quite heavy although with 60 users it shouldnt be too bad. Would you be using a SAN or NAS to host the virtual machines or are you thinking local storage? You can also virtualise the other server roles as you mentioned although Im not sure about TS as Ive never done it before.

I also prefer to keep at least 1 DC as a seperate physical machine and make it a global catalogue server so that if all goes pear shaped at least people can still logon.

Hope that helps
Barnabas (4562)
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