Microsoft Exchange on a Virtual Server: The official line was always “No-it’s not supported”, but the release of Hyper-V has brought some changes.
Hyper-V now lets you run the Exchange 2007 SP1 64 bit versions of Mailbox, Hub Transport and Client Access Server Roles without losing support, however Unified Messaging is still only supported on physical hardware.
Here’s a link to the support policy and recommendations paper for Exchange 2007 on Microsoft Virtualization technology:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794548(EXCHG.80).aspx
“What about us non Hyper-V users?” I hear you cry..
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=897615
is a link to the ”support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software”. As you can see, your Hypervisor needs to have been validated to be supported and so far the only on is VMWare ESX 3.5u2.
Also, here’s a link that shows all the MS Server software that is supported when running on a validated Hypervisor:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957006
To see what Microsoft have got to say about the world of Unified Communications, head over to the Microsoft UK UC Blog at:
http://blogs.technet.com/msukucc/
Cheers
Rich
