Johann's Unified Communications : virtualisation

OCS 2007 R2 Virtualisation Support

jkruse — Thu, 14 May 2009 04:15:02 GMT

We are pleased to announce official support for server virtualisation for Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

We are introducing support for both a fully distributed virtualised topology across several hypervisors and for a single server virtualised topology. These topologies are supported on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and any Server Virtualisation Validation Program (SVVP) certified partner solution (http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvp.htm).

Presence, Instant Messaging (including remote access, federation, and Public IM Connectivity) and Group Chat workloads are supported. The following server roles can be deployed:

Front-End Servers
Back-End SQL Server 2008 64 bits
Group Chat Channel Servers
Group Chat Compliance Servers
Archiving Servers
Monitoring (CDR only) Servers
Edge Access Servers

The virtual machines must be running on Windows Server 2008 64-bit. Archiving Server and Monitoring Server can be connected to a virtualised Enterprise pool, but they must run on a physical server. The fully virtualised distributed topology has been tested to handle up to 40,000 users, including 10,000 group chat users.

Virtualisation of the other workloads is not supported because of possible quality issues with real-time media.

Specifically, voice, video, live meeting and desktop sharing workloads cannot be part of the virtualised deployment. Therefore audio/video/web conferencing servers, audio/video/web edge conferencing servers, dial-in conferencing, Communicator Web Access, enterprise voice, or Remote Call Control may not be deployed as part of the virtualised pool.

If any one of these workloads is required, a new pool with physical servers must be deployed for those users. For more information about support for client virtualisation technologies, please refer to the official support statement at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951152.

In order to plan both their physical and virtualised topologies, customers can use Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Capacity Planning Tool, which can simulate user load for the available workloads. This will help customers validating the hypervisor load and scalability before going to production.

For more information there is a whitepaper available for download: “Running Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in a Virtualized Topology” - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0a45d921-3b48-44e4-b42b-19704a2b81b0&displaylang=en

This document describes the results of a series of configurations that were run in a Hyper-V environment to validate that Office Communications Server on Hyper-V provides stable performance and scalability for production use.

The support statement at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd572860(office.13).aspx will be updated in the next few days to reflect this.

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 VHD

jkruse — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:54:51 GMT

This download comes as a pre-configured VHD. This download enables you evaluate Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 for 60 days.

Start evaluating Office Communications Server today. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 delivers streamlined communications for your users so they can find and communicate with the right person, right now, from the applications they use most (like Office Outlook).

Note:

1. This trial software is intended for evaluation purposes only.
2. There is no product support for this trial. You are welcome to share your trial experience with others and to ask for advice by participating in the forums.

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is required to use this virtual machine
In addition to the system requirements for Windows Server 2008 as described in the release notes, a 64-bit system with hardware-assisted virtualization enabled and data execution prevention (DEP) is required.

Download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=3bfe2fb6-493b-42d6-859e-eddddf04e2e8

Exchange 2007 SP1 Virtualisation and Licensing Announcements

jkruse — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 02:18:17 GMT

Two big announcements for Exchange 2007 SP1:

Microsoft now supports Exchange Server 2007 SP1 running on Hyper-V or other hypervisors validated under the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).
Microsoft is waiving its 90-day license reassignment policy to enable customers who virtualise Exchange to move their licenses between servers within a data farm as often as necessary.

I recommend reading the following articles for all the necessary information:

Microsoft Virtualization and Licensing Announcements - http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2008/08/19/449621.aspx
Microsoft Support Policies and Recommendations for Exchange Servers in Hardware Virtualization Environments - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794548.aspx

And if you're coming to Tech.Ed in Australia or NZ make sure you attend UNC306: Exchange Server 2007 SP1 and Hyper-V where we will be doing a deep-dive on this topic - all the official technical information, recommendations, and some of the gotchas.

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Hyper-V is here.. what about Exchange?

jkruse — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:58:00 GMT

In case you haven't heard the news, we have released Hyper-V into the wild. In fact did you know that 25% of microsoft.com is already running on Hyper-V VMs?

So what about Exchange Server?

As we recently announced at Tech.Ed USA, Microsoft will be publishing a support statement with respect to Exchange Server on Hyper-V within 60 days of today.

Some of the more noteworthy bits of info from the session are:

Within 60 days of Hyper-V's RTM, the Exchange team will publish a detailed support statement for Hyper-V, and a TechNet article with best practices.
Customers should not deploy Exchange on Hyper-V until our support guidance is available.
Early results show that performance of Exchange 2007 on Hyper-V is quite good, and that it scales very well from 1-4 processors per VM.

In terms of best practices and requirements, the following guidance was released:

We're only supporting guests running Exchange Server 2007 SP1 on Windows Server 2008.
We're only supporting fixed disks, and not dynamic disks.
Storage should be on spindles that are separate from the Guest operating system VHD physical storage.
Storage must be SCSI passthrough or iSCSI (with a preference of SCSI passthrough for queues, databases and log files).
All Exchange server roles, except for the Unified Messaging server role, will be supported.
There's a limit on VHD size of 2040 GB.

It was also mentioned that Hyper-V is a good fit when Exchange servers in branch offices cannot be consolidated to a central datacenter (for example, because of bandwidth or connectivity issues).

In terms of workload, not every workload is a candidate for virtualisation. For example, server roles such as Client Access and Hub Transport can be good candidates, but a more heavy hitter like the Mailbox role (which often uses all available resources on a physical server) might not be the best candidate for virtualising.

So what's the really great thing about this soon-to-be-released guidance?

60 days from now is just in time for Tech.Ed Australia and New Zealand!!!

So of course will be doing a deep-dive on running Exchange 2007 SP1 on Hyper-V based on the official supported guidance :)

In Auckland this will be presented by Sandy Millar, Lead Architect in APAC for MCS; and in Sydney it will be presented by Mario Tevanian and Sander Valkhoff, lead Exchange consultants for MCS Australia.

So make sure you're there to hear all of the official guidance and advice. The Auckland event is sold out, but there are still spaces left in Sydney. Come on kiwis, jump on a plane and visit us in Sydney! We've already committed to our USA speakers that the weather in Sydney will be perfect :)

(also, today (27th June) is the last day for early-bird registration which will save you $250!)

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