I have been looking at a design for Exchange 2007 and wondered about Virtualization. So I have been looking for information about, and here are my finding:
Exchange 2007 and Virtualization
Exchange 2007 is not supported in production in a virtual environment; however, as stated above, Microsoft Virtual Server makes a great environment for training, labs, and demos. Exchange 2007 is supported in production environments using only the 64-bit version of Exchange 2007, and currently neither Microsoft Virtual Server nor Microsoft Virtual PC support 64-bit guest systems. Exchange 2007 is also not supported in production in a virtual environment using non-Microsoft virtualization software. For details about the Microsoft support policy for third-party virtualization software, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 897615, Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software.
The first 64-bit guest support is expected to be included with Hypervisor, which is an add-on for Windows Server Code Name “Longhorn” from Microsoft that is scheduled to ship within 180 days of Longhorn. Note that this is within 180 days, meaning it could ship the same day as Longhorn, or it could ship 180 days after Longhorn ships. For more information about Microsoft’s virtualization plans, see the Microsoft Machine Virtualization Roadmap Chat-Transcript.
It does make me laugh, what about VmWare they can do 64 bit now …. oh but you won’t support it … check this out why!
Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software
Microsoft does not test or support Microsoft software running in conjunction with non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software. For Microsoft customers who do not have a Premier-level support agreement, Microsoft will require the issue to be reproduced independently from the non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software. Where the issue is confirmed to be unrelated to the non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software, Microsoft will support its software in a manner that is consistent with support provided when that software is not running in conjunction with non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software.
So it all come down to Virtual Server not being able to support a 64-bit, as Exchange 2003 was supported
Support policy for Exchange Server 2003 running on hardware virtualization software
So next in my research was Enterprise Vault. It would seem that this can be virtualized. Enterprise Vault 7.0 is okay to run VMWare ESX 3.0 and Virtual Server 2005 (32bit SQL is too)
As for Blackberry Enterprise Server, with BlackBerry Enterprise Server v4.1 Service Pack 2 supports virtualization with VMWare® Datacenter grade ESX v2.5.2 (or later)
So that is it, if you are tight on datacentre a space you could virtualize you Enterprise Vault server and BES using ESX, but you could have performance issues
flaphead.com 