Hardware virtualisation support for Exchange UM Announced

Microsoft have announced support for the Exchange 2010 SP1 Unified Messaging role on hardware virtualisation. The Technet blog article is here and the official Exchange 2010 system requirements are available here.

Specifically, the UM role has the following requirements -

• Four virtual processors are required for the virtual machine. Memory should be sized using standard best practices guidance.
  
• Four physical processor cores are available for use at all times by each Unified Messaging role virtual machine. This requirement means that no processor oversubscription can be in use. This requirement affects the ability of the Unified Messaging role virtual machine to utilize physical processor resources.

Lync Client virtualisation

Microsoft have published a document outlining best practice for running the Lync 2010 in a virtualised environment.

Server Virtualization in Microsoft Lync Server 2010

Microsoft have published a whitepaper on Virtualisation for Lync Server 2010. It is available for download from Microsoft here.

Windows Server 2008 R2 is the required guest operating system. Windows Server 2008 SP2 is not supported.VMWare ESX 4.0 is also supported.

Small VM Host Configuration

A single VM host with direct attached storage configuration.

Small VM host configuration diagram

Recommended networking:

·         Dual network adapter/host: 1 network adapter reserved for host access, 1+ network adapter for shared VM guest application workload.

·         network adapter speed: 1 GbE or 10 GbE (VMQ)

Recommended storage:

·         Dedicated spindle for VM host, as well as a dedicated spindle for each VM guest virtual drive

Not recommended:

·         100 Mbps network adapters

·         Single network adapter (for VM host and VM guest application workload)

·         Shared spindles between host and guests, or between guests

Virtual Standard  Edition Deployment

The most interesting deployment is a single virtual host with all roles required for a full implementation for 2000 users.

All virtual Standard Edition deployment, single Standard Edition server, with Archiving and Monitoring, SQL Server (Archiving and Monitoring), Edge Server (VLAN configuration to perimeter network)

Scale: 2K users, default usage profile, all modalities

Lync Server Role	Features	Physical			Virtual
		CPU	Memory	User	CPU	Memory	User
Enterprise Edition Front End Server	IM&P	8 core	12 GB	20K	4 core	10 GB	12.5K
Enterprise Edition Front End Server	IM&P, AS, AV, EV	8 core	16 GB	5K	4 core	16 GB	2.5K
Enterprise Edition Front End Server	IM&P, AS, EV (8 Front End pool)	8 core	12 GB	10K	4 core	11 GB	5K
Enterprise Edition Front End Server	IM&P, AS, EV (single Front End Server in pool)	8 core	12 GB	7K	4 core	11 GB	4K
Standard Edition Front End Server	IM&P	8 core	16  GB	25K	4 core	12 GB	12.5K
Standard Edition Front End Server	IM&P, AS, AV, EV	8 core	16 GB	5K	4 core	16 GB	2.5K
Director	Reg	4 core	4 GB	20K	4 core	4 GB	10K
Monitor/Archiving Server		8 core	16 GB	230K	4 core	8 GB	110K
A/V Conferencing Server	AV	8 core	16 GB	20K	4 core	11 GB	10K
Mediation Server*	MS	8 core	16 GB	800 concurrent calls	4 core	10 GB	400 concurrent calls
Edge Server	AP, DP   MR	8 core	16 GB	15K	4 core	8 GB	7.5K
Survivable Branch Server	Reg, MS	2 core	2 GB	1K	2 core	2 GB	1K
SQL Server Back End Server (FE)		8 core	32 GB	80K	4 core	16 GB	40K
SQL Backend (M/A)		8 core	16 GB	230K	4 core	12 GB	115K
File Server		4 core	4 GB	80K	2 core	3 GB	40K