In our testbeds here is what we have generally observed
Performance: - Test results
Test results for Exchange 2007 on VI3 have been uniformly excellent so far. Results generated with multiple major hardware partners show both high performance under heavy load and excellent scalability.
Most of this work was done with the "
heavy" user profile selected for LoadGen during benchmark testing. The key finding in our most recent work is that on systems short of complete saturation there is no observable difference in response time between the native and virtual deployments.
You can find
multiple papers on the VMware Web Site in the Resources section
You can view
performance information on the VMware Web Site
You can view
scalability information on the VMware Web Site
Support - Microsoft's support
Microsoft's support for customers with Premier support contracts has been uniformly excellent. Their policy (
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615) includes all products, including Exchange. There is always some concern over the possible need to reproduce the problem in a physical environment, but we've never heard of this actually happening. For customers who have enterprise support agreements, vendors' are starting to support applications in a virtualized environment.
In Summary:
In short, customers we talked to, that have tested and deployed Exchange 2007 on VI3 in production have confirmed our results - it works beautifully, with all the bells and whistles. As with any major application deployment, you should always evaluate, design, test re-evaluate and retest if necessary before deploying into a production environment. "Measure twice, Cut once". We're routinely demonstrating VMotion of Exchange 2007 mailbox servers under heavy load at shows now. Come see us at InterOP 2008, EMC World 2008 and Microsoft TechEd 2008
