Exchange 2010 roles on multiple VMs

Question

I'm looking for some guidance / best practices on how to setup high availability on my exchange 2010 SP2 install. I'd like to install each role in a different VM on 1 server, then have a second server with VMs for each role. These 2 physical boxes would be in 2 locations and somehow has to sync up so if site 1 fails, site 2 kicks in automatically.

Additionally, we have 3 organizations that need to be legally separated so i'm hoping to use the new ABP features to create this isolation.

I've googled for the last hour but can't seem to find anything clearly outline the process. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

@ewwhite - right now about 80, it may reach 200 in a few years. — Khalid Rahaman, Mar 24 '12 at 18:23
For that few users, I wouldn't separate Exchange roles. But let's see what other people contribute. — ewwhite, Mar 24 '12 at 19:43

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 27 '12 at 01:34

For that many users... I would use two virtual machines. One for the CAS role, the other to hold the mailbox and hub transport roles. Use of the edge role depends on what kind of spam/virus filtering, typically I suggest people use an appliance or a service like Postini. If you need something more highly available, you could use two servers and run a DAG for the mailbox store, but keep in mind you need the enterprise edition of Windows for that.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 27 '12 at 01:30

I can't speak for best practice as our setup is a bit "different". We do have about 200 mailboxes though.

But on a real simple level we have three Mail Database servers in the DAG. These three machines are responsible for keeping ~20 databases online. Two are on identical HyperV boxes, the third is on a previous generation server. The 3rd VM is mostly there to act as a backup in the even the other two fail (they are in the same rack).

For our front end we have two VMs both pointed to the back ends. The users are directed to either and Exchange handles the swapover for the users between the two when one is taken offline. So to asnwer your question about failing over at the user level, either machine can handle the Outlook requests. if one goes offline, OL gets bounced to the other server. The user will get a popup alert in the task bar says "connection to server lost", but after about 20-30 seconds "connect to microsoft exchange". Most of the users never realize it has even happened.

Since we are only in one facility, we don't have to contend with WAN replication issues. But from what I can surmise, it should be no problem to do it. The replication between back end servers is relatively quick and there are controls in place to throttle the traffic. If you don't mind your users having a slower experience during downtime, you shoudl be fine. Though I'd almost expect it to be similiar in speeds to a user on Outlook connected via RDP over HTTP.

Keep in mind you will need enterprise versions of windows and exchange to accomplish this. Over all the setup works really well.

Exchange 2010 roles on multiple VMs

2 Answers2