How do you test, break/fix and learn new technologies when you have to work on large enterprise project, when you have to migration, HA, DR etc stuff?Where Technology Meets Talent

I use a virtualized environment for my Exchange lab. Its running fully on Hyper V (AMD Phenom with 16 GB RAM). My second lab machine is getting ready (i7 8320 with 32GB RAM). On the networking part, I use a Net-gear wireless router and a Nokia Siemens broadband router.Shaba

Hyper-v is your friend. Hyper-v Server 2008 R2, the free version, is plenty to get you going with a couple of old servers and some storage. You can build up and simulate some rather complex environments this way.

I do have Hp Dl 380 G5 with 16GB and using iSCSI and I run 4 guest at a time but sometime performance is too bad or take too much time to load EMS. Do you use internal storage? If you use single physical server and run multiple guest then how to test your DAG or EX2007 CCR or SCR and CAS NLB?Where Technology Meets Talent

Here is my current setup. Windows 8 Server - Base Machine All gusts machines configured with Dynamic Memory which gives good improvement on perfomance. * DC - Windows 2008 with 2 GB RAM * MBX1, MBX2 - Windows 2008 with Exchange 2010 with 4 GB RAM on each server * HubCas - Windows 2008 with Exchange 2010 with 4GB RAM DAG Configured and works fine. My second server is getting ready where I will be building a different site and testing out data center fail over scenarios. CAS NLB - I haven't tried yet but can try using Windows NLB.Shaba

All gusts machines configured with Dynamic Memory which gives good improvement on perfomance. Where is that option?Where Technology Meets Talent

Shaba

You should be seeing this feature with HyperV installed on Window 2008 R2 Sp1 and above or Windows 8 Server http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff817651%28v=ws.10%29.aspx And with Dynamic memory configured, Installation of Exchange 2010 SP1 media will fail as the pre installation part will check for memory type. So I installed Exchange 2010 and directly applied SP2 which works fine.Shaba

Thanks for the help Shaba. Let me update my system too. You didn't mentioned about the disk , do you use internal or iSCSI?Where Technology Meets Talent

I use internal disks (SATA 500 GB - HyperV VHDS and SATA 250 GB - OS) In my new machine, I am planning to try SSD at-least for OS. Shaba

And try out Windows 8 Server. I feel that its more stable and using HyperV 3 (Latest version).Shaba

Were you able to configure DAG?Where Technology Meets Talent

so you are already using Windows Server 8? Where Technology Meets Talent

I am on Windows 8 Server(HyperV Base Machine) and I have configured DAG on the gust VMs.Shaba

Don't you have issue on this Beta?Where Technology Meets Talent

Till this point, with specific to HyperV - I don't have any issues.Shaba