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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Exchange 2010 and VMware HA

Ok, so I have seen multiple different places confirming that Microsoft is not supporting VMware High Availability for Exchange 2010 DAG clusters. What I want to know is why? I don't see how HA is going to affect the cluster or servers functionality.

HA doesn't do anything to the running VM or change it in any way. It simply reboots the machine if the hosting server sustains a hardware failure (Or, if VM monitoring is turned on and the heartbeat fails). So, question is how is this any different than rebooting a physical server that is part of a DAG after it sustains a blue screen or hardware issue? Granted the VM will boot faster than a physical server, but what will go wrong if anything?

DAC will keep the server from mounting its databases if the owning server cannot be contacted. PAM and SAM should also keep the server from trying to become the active owner of the database after it reboots.

Anyone have insight on this? Also, I have seen others stating that VMotion/DRS will also not be supported. Same question there, this does not change the server, however there is the possiblity of a slight network blip during the move. Thoughts or knowledge of why this is their stance?

It is easy enough to turn these features off, but why lose these awesome features if you don't have to. I will most likely leave them on, and use them, unless I see them really break something.

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