Chris’s Blog

Microsoft recently released the Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer. The Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer performs an overall topology readiness scan of your environment. When you run the Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer, it provides a detailed report that will alert you if there are any issues within your organization, which could prevent you from deploying Exchange 2010.

The checks performed by ExPDA are similar to the pre-requisite checks implemented (ExBPA) in the Exchange 2010 Setup program. However, unlike Exchange 2010 setup, this tool focuses only on overall topology readiness and not the ability to run Exchange 2010 on the local computer. The scan also performs a deep analysis of each existing Exchange 2003/2007 server to verify that it has the necessary updates and configuration in-place to support Exchange 2010.

For more information about the Exchange Pre-Deployment Analyzer (ExPDA), visit The Microsoft Exchange Team blog here

To download ExPDA, click here

I am often asked about virtualization when talking to my customers about Exchange. Virtualization has been a big thing in the industry for a while now, so it makes sense that many customers are looking to take advantage of the many benefits, including server consolidation. What does Microsoft support? Virtualization support has not changed much since Exchange Server 2007 SP1.

Microsoft supports Exchange Server in production on hardware virtualization software only when all the following conditions are true:

1. The hardware virtualization software is running:
   Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V technology
   Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V technology
   Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008
   Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
   Any third-party hypervisor that has been validated under the Windows Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).
2. The Exchange guest virtual machine:
   Is running Microsoft Exchange 2007 SP1 or Exchange 2010.
   Is deployed on the Windows Server 2008 and above
   Doesn’t have the Unified Messaging server role installed. All Exchange server roles, except for the Unified Messaging server role, are supported in a virtualization environment.
3. The storage used by the Exchange guest machine can be virtual storage of a fixed size, SCSI pass-through storage, or iSCSI storage. In a Hyper-V environment, each fixed VHD must be less than 2,040 GB.Virtual disks that dynamically expand or use differencing or delta mechanisms aren’t supported by Exchange.
4. Only management software can be deployed on the physical root machine. The root machine should be dedicated to running guest virtual machines.
5. Microsoft doesn’t support combining Exchange high availability solutions (SCC, CCR, DAGs) with hypervisor-based clustering, high availability, or migration solutions. DAGs are supported in hardware virtualization environments provided that the virtualization environment doesn’t employ clustered root servers.
6. Virtual machine snapshots of an Exchange guest virtual machine is not supported.
7. Exchange supports a virtual processor-to-logical processor ratio no greater than 2:1. For example, a dual processor system using quad core processors contains a total of 8 logical processors in the host system. On a system with this configuration, do not allocate more than a total of 16 virtual processors to all guest virtual machines combined.
8. The operating system for an Exchange guest machine must use a fixed sized disk that has a minimum size equal to 15 GB plus the size of the virtual memory that’s allocated to the guest machine. This requirement is necessary to account for the operating system and paging file disk requirements.

For more detailed information on Exchange Server Virtualization see the following Technet documentation:

• Microsoft Support Policies and Recommendations for Exchange Servers in Hardware Virtualization Environments
• Exchange 2010 System Requirements
• Microsoft server software and supported virtualization environments