beingexchanged: MTC Part Two

Back at the Microsoft Technology Center here in NYC for another day of hands-on Exchange 2007 setup work. We're presenting tomorrow on both Exchange and SharePoint protection with Double-Take Software (see disclaimer below), and today I got to finalize the environment and test failover and failback. Of course, failover and failback worked perfectly, but I was really impressed with the new Hyper-V systems that we're using to create and run the demos.

So far they've handled all of the Exchange stuff the exact same way as physical servers, including the failover and failback processes that call for Active Directory and WMI updates along with starting and stopping Exchange services on one or both machines. Since the system is automated, the changes happen rapidly. On physical servers, this doesn't pose a problem, but sometimes virtual machines (sharing processors and RAM) can get bogged down. That has not been the case here, with the Hyper-V VM's staying responsive and moving fluidly through the entire process.

Granted, you probably wouldn't put the DC/DNS Server and both the production and failover Exchange servers on the same Hyper-V host in a production environment. But, it is nice to know that it can be done.

Hyper-V is relatively easy to use if you're familiar with the current virtualization tools on the market from a variety of vendors. For Exchange 2007 on Server 2003, the VM's behave exactly the same as a physical box would with the same software set - as you would expect from a VM tool. What is different is the speed at which they reboot. Even with Exchange 2007's extended boot-up time, the average reboot took only 1-2 minutes, as compared to 3-5 minutes for physical boxes and other VM platforms. This could just be a quirk of the environment we're building in, but that's still a fast boot up.

In terms of configuration, the GUI interface for Hyper-V allows for the standard set of server definition variables. You select file locations for the definition files and the virtual hard disks, set the amount of RAM, processors, etc, and then boot the VM. For these servers, we used cloned Windows 2003 Enterprise installs taken from other VM's already built, but you can boot from a virtual CD-ROM or any physical boot media the host can see attached to itself.

From there, as expected, the server behaves much like a physical box, loading the OS and rebooting as required. Once you're up and running on a Supported OS, you can install the Hyper-V Integration Services via a virtual CD-ROM. This enhances mouse and keyboard integration and opens up several dozen options - such as the ability to share folders between the host and the guest.

Networking options follow the standard set of VM options, including the ability to create Host-Only networks that can't see the outside world, or bridge physical adapters from the host to the guests. This is especially helpful for Exchange, as you could create a Host-Only network between the Mailbox role servers and the Hub/Transport and CAS role servers, while giving the latter another interface to the outside world.

We're using a combination of virtual disks and physical disks, so I did not get a chance to play around with the Snapshot features - which require that all volumes be on virtual disks to function properly. I've done snaps of Exchange 2007 servers with other tools with a good success record, and I was hoping to try it with Hyper-V too. That'll have to wait for next time.

Oh, before I forget, though we'll be in the Grand Central Briefing Center, this MTC has an Envisioning Center as well. It's a theater-like room that showcases all the latest (and even some upcoming) Microsoft products. And sure enough, they have a working Surface unit that I got to play with.