Virtualizing Exchange with VMware

Provide simple and cost-effective high availability and disaster recovery for all Exchange server roles with VMware Fault Tolerance, VMware High Availability, vMotion, and Site Recovery Manager. Eliminate the need to deploy complex Microsoft Clustering solutions and dedicated standby servers. Alternatively, run Microsoft Clustering on vSphere and combine with vSphere availability solutions to achieve best-in-class availability. Eliminate planned downtime for hardware maintenance with VMware vMotion. Simply vMotion your Exchange virtual machines to another physical host for the duration of the maintenance, with no impact on service availability.

Protect all Exchange server roles against hardware failures and OS problems with VMware Fault Tolerance or VMware High Availability. In the event of hardware failure, VMware FT ensures continuous availability with no data loss, while VMware HA automatically restarts the virtual machines on another host in minutes.

Implement a simple, automated disaster recovery plan with VMware disaster recovery solutions and Site Recovery Manager. Replicate and recover virtual machines on a secondary site, including entire Exchange deployments, without dedicated standby hardware.

For continuous application-aware availability, combine Microsoft Clustering with VMware availability solutions to provide an additional layer of protection and maximize uptime.

Sizing Exchange infrastructure leads to a difficult compromise between providing enough capacity to support future requirements while keeping infrastructure costs under control. Use vSphere to “right-size” virtual machines for today’s needs with the ability to scale dynamically to support future loads.

• Start with small memory and CPU configurations
• Use vCenter CapacityIQ to right-size infrastructure for today’s needs
• If a host runs out of capacity, VMware DRS automatically triggers vMotion to move the Exchange virtual machines to another host with appropriate resources
• If an Exchange mailbox runs out of capacity, hot-add CPU, memory or disk to preserve service-levels

Provisioning new email services into production can take months of lead time to procure and install dedicated hardware, provision and configure the OS, and finally configure the application. This long manual process is also error-prone and can lead to configuration mistakes and service downtime.

With vSphere, create a library of vApps that can be provisioned on demand onto your existing virtual infrastructure in minutes. For example, with virtual appliances, reduce the lead time to deploy BlackBerry Enterprise Server from weeks or months down to minutes.

Test and troubleshoot your complex email applications quickly while minimizing risk of change. Use vCenter Snapshots and Clones to reproduce your vApps, encapsulating entire multitier applications, in the lab in minutes. Test your application changes in the context of related application tiers, and on an exact copy of your production configuration, to minimize the risk of errors. Eliminate the need to provision applications manually for each test cycle.