Im trying to see what best practices are for running Exchange 2010 in a virtual enviroment (either vmware or hyper-v). Should the store be located on a vmdk or what about a physical drive like a NAS? I want reliablity while not harming performance. anyone have a link to an article?Brad Nelson MCSE/DCSE/A+/Network+/WCSP

Hi Brad, I can answer this, but I'm not sure where to start really, because there are too many variables in terms of hardware.. there are a lot of factors involved such as disk configurations, speed.. if your talking about a NAS then are you dedicating NIC's.. are there switches between the server and the NAS box.. that kind of thing. Reliability with NAS totally and completely depends on hardware, if your going down the route redundant controllers, switches and the use of MPIO then you certainly have the reliability box ticked. If your talking about best practice between a virtual disk or a physical disk stored on server itself, then it more often comes down to preference as there are no real major benefits in terms of reliability or performance of either option in terms of ESX and Hyper-V. It's generally said that virtual disks (provided they are fixed VHD's) provide slightly better performance these days, but it's nothing noticeable IMHO. Some articles that will help: VMWare: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/solutions/08Q4_VM_Exchange_Server_2007_VI3_WP.pdf Microsoft: http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/7/7/0778C0BB-5281-4390-92CD-EC138A18F2F9/WS08_R2_VHD_Performance_WhitePaper.docx See also: http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Exchange-NAS-Proved-Approved.html Regards, Nathan Owen (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) - Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" on the post that helps you. Links: www.mad-monkey.co.uk - www.capitalnetworks.co.uk

“Storage used by an Exchange guest machine for storage of Exchange data must be block-level storage because Exchange 2010 doesn't support the use of network attached storage (NAS) volumes. Also, NAS storage that's presented to the guest as block-level storage via the hypervisor isn't supported” -------Refer to <Exchange 2010 System Requirements> As I know, exchange doesn’t declare which virtualization software is recommended For further question about the difference between Hyper-V and VMWare, please use the “Hyper-V” forum Related threads: Hyper-V Vs VMware Hyper-V R2 vs VMWare ESXi Resources: VMWare vs. Microsoft Virtualization Understanding Storage Configuration James Luo TechNet Subscriber Support in forum If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Excellent info...thanks!Brad Nelson MCSE/DCSE/A+/Network+/WCSP

And, Brad, which type of disk do you gouing to use as exchange database storage? in http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/wherevm/exchange-2010-on-vsphere-4-best-practices-part-2-40997 says that is possible to use "Eager-Zeroed Thick Disk types for your Database and Log VMDK volumes" in my case, I want to use HP d2600 DAS and vmfs (vmdk) storage for place ex. database files, but my doubts are what will going on in case of vmdk\vmfs damage (even three-copy DAG will exist)