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4 Replies Last post: Nov 13, 2007 4:50 PM by dansolo  
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vmworld.nico
3 posts since
Sep 10, 2007

Sep 19, 2007 5:08 AM

Virtualizing an Exchange 2003 environment with 40.000 mailboxes


Has somebody experience in running an large Exchange/W2K3 2003 environment with 20.000 or more mailboxes on ESX 3? At this moment we have 5 physical servers with 4.000 mailboxes each .

Gr.

Nico

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Ken Cohen
13 posts since
Sep 18, 2007
1. Sep 19, 2007 5:35 AM in response to: vmworld.nico
Re: Virtualizing an Exchange 2003 environment with 40.000 mailboxes

Have you seen this article? http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/978

From the artcle 4000 users/server may be a bit aggressive, it looks like a dual proc VM can handle 2200 users.

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Andrew Cohen
1 posts since
Oct 22, 2007
2. Oct 23, 2007 2:00 PM in response to: Ken Cohen
Re: Virtualizing an Exchange 2003 environment with 40.000 mailboxes

For that large of an environment, I don't see the benefit of virtualizing the Exchange server.
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Ken Cohen
13 posts since
Sep 18, 2007
3. Oct 23, 2007 4:47 PM in response to: Andrew Cohen
Re: Virtualizing an Exchange 2003 environment with 40.000 mailboxes
I think you have to look at the whole picture. If you can manage more exchange servers, virtualization brings a lot to the table, especially as new features are rolled out. DRS and HA are great features that are available now, Continuous Availabiltity (coming soon) will make the system nearly bulletproof without having to try to configure Microsoft Clustering Services.
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dansolo
6 posts since
Sep 10, 2007
4. Nov 13, 2007 4:50 PM in response to: vmworld.nico
Re: Virtualizing an Exchange 2003 environment with 40.000 mailboxes
With an implementation that large, there would be several factors to consider. Are you planning a 1:1 move to take advantage of DRS/HA or putting multiple boxes on a single host to also consolidate? Obviously IOPS would be an issue, but how are you storing the data now - fiber channel SAN? There should be no issue with procs or RAM as ESX3 should be able to address more than your current servers. Are you considering a move to 2007? That would drive down the IOPS requirement and also give you 64-bit memory allocation.

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