14 DAY TRIAL // Customers leveraging Exchange Server 2010 will be able to run the Unified Messaging server role in a virtualized environment, Microsoft informed. For this, they will first need to make the jump to Service Pack 1 (SP1). The first update for Exchange Server 2010 was released to manufacturing in August 2010 and is available for download free of charge, as all service packs from Microsoft are.
Kevin Allison, General Manager Exchange Customer Experience revealed that support for Exchange 2010 SP1 Unified Messaging server role in virtualized environments was introduced as a part of a move designed to enhance positioning for the communication product.
“Combining Exchange 2010 high availability solutions (database availability groups (DAGs)) with hypervisor-based clustering, high availability, or migration solutions that will move or automatically failover mailbox servers that are members of a DAG between clustered root servers, is now supported,” Allison stated.
“Due to improvements we made in Exchange Server 2010 SP1, along with more comprehensive testing of Exchange 2010 in a virtualized environment, we are happy to provide this additional deployment flexibility to our customers.”
Virtualization is not only a stepping stone to the Cloud, but also a way for companies to cost costs related to investments in physical servers.
Running Exchange Server 2010 in a virtualized environment helps customers reduce server consolidation and licensing costs, the software giant explained.
According to Allison, the “updated support guidance applies to any hardware virtualization vendor participating in the Windows Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).”
Those IT professionals that feel like they could use a tag of help from Microsoft when it comes down to virtualizing Exchange 2010, they need not look any further than a whitepaper that the Redmond company is offerings as a free download.
The Best Practices for Virtualizing Exchange Server 2010 with Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V whitepaper is available through the Download Center.
“This whitepaper is designed to provide technical guidance on Exchange server roles, capacity planning, sizing and performance, as well as high availability best practices,” Allison said.
Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) RTM is available for download here.