"V" for Virtualization

Overview

Organizations looking to deploy or upgrade to Microsoft Exchange 2010 have many options for providing highly available service. With the latest release of Microsoft Exchange, providing high availability is easier than ever. When deploying an Exchange 2010 mailbox cluster (known as a Database Availability Group or DAG), almost no knowledge of the Microsoft Clustering Service is required because the installer installs and configures all required components. Shared storage is no longer required, which helps reduce the single points of failure, and databases can now fail-over individually instead of failing over the entire server (as in previous versions).
When organizations virtualize the Exchange environment on VMware vSphere™, additional options and features are available that can complement virtualized DAG nodes. As of Exchange 2010 SP1 Microsoft has added support for using hypervisor-based clustering solutions along with Exchange 2010 DAGs. Additionally, the use of live migration technology such as VMware vMotion™ is fully supported with Exchange 2010 DAGs. Microsoft support details for Exchange 2010 on hardware virtualization solutions can be found in Microsoft Exchange 2010 System Requirements. VMware has also published a KB article, Microsoft Clustering on VMware vSphere: Guidelines for Supported Configurations, to provide guidance for virtualized Microsoft clustering solutions.
Tests indicate that VMware vSphere features, including VMware HA, Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS), and vMotion, can be used with virtualized Exchange 2010 DAG nodes. Test cases included automated DAG node recovery using VMware HA to reduce the amount of time needed to reestablish database protection, and vMotion of DAG nodes. Distributed Resource Scheduling relies on vMotion, so by testing vMotion we can confidently say that DRS can be used effectively with DAG nodes. By testing with loads similar to those found in production environments, guidance and best practices have been established for using these vSphere features in production Exchange 2010 environments.

Документ: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/solutions/VMware-Using-HA-DRS-vMotion-with-Exchange-2010-DAGs.pdf