Deja vu. Well, almost. I sat in on a simliar session last year and I wondered what has now changed with vSphere being available and what new expectations could be had for virtualizing Exchange and I found answers. First of all, as the speaker put it – VMware has eaten their own dogfood and virtualized Exchange 2007 for their internal consumption. With approximately 55,000 mailboxes, that is an impressive feat itself.
Beyond internal consumption, all data points to Exchange evolving into a better workload to run within virtualization. Much of that can probably be attributed to Microsoft’s own virtualization technology, but Exchange on ESX benefits just the same. Performance gains out of ESX 4 make for a good combination with the improved I/O for Exchange 2007. Initial data for Exchange 2010 continues the trend of making Exchange a better workload in general and making it more appropriate to virtualize.
