Dell System 220e- User Manual

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 6 6 Target Audience This guide is intended for IT professionals and technical decision makers (TDMs), including IT consultants and architects, IT managers, and messaging administrators. With this guide, IT professionals can better understand...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 7 7 Why Virtualize Exchange? The demand to virtualize tier-1 applications such as Exchange Server continuously increases as IT organizations push toward completely virtualized environments to improve efficiency, reduce operational and capita...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 9 9 Fabric Configuration With Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, customers can make the best use of new and existing server hardware investments by consolidating multiple workloads as separate virtual machines, reducing the number of physical mach...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 11 11 Scalability Maximums of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V provides significant scalability improvements over Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 greatly expands support for the number of...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 12 12 Compute Considerations Organizations need virtualization technology that can support the massive scalability requirements of a demanding Exchange 2013 deployment. One of the key requirements to virtualizing such workloads is to have a ...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 13 13 SLAT technologies also help to reduce CPU and memory overhead, thereby allowing more virtual machines to be run concurrently on a single Hyper-V machine. The Intel SLAT technology is known as Extended Page Tables (EPT); the AMD SLAT te...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 14 14 Figure 3: Weights and reserves in Windows Server 2012 Best Practices and Recommendations The Weights and Reserves feature, when used properly, can be a great tuning mechanism for Exchange 2013 virtual machines. If CPU resources are ove...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 16 16 Page File Guidance When a machine runs low on memory and needs more immediately, the operating system uses hard disk space to supplement system RAM through a procedure called paging . Too much paging degrades overall system performance...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 17 17 Storage Considerations Storage configuration is one of the critical design considerations for any Mailbox Server role in Exchange 2013. With a growing number of physical storage devices resulting in increased power use, organizations w...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 18 18 Thinly provisioned virtual disks can be provisioned from the available capacity. Thin provisioning helps to reserve the actual capacity by reclaiming capacity on the space when files are deleted or no longer in use. Figure 6: Conceptua...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 20 20 Figure 9: Parity storage space across four disks Parity storage spaces are used for the following:  Providing data recovery of failed disks.  Offering efficient capacity utilization.  Delivering faster read operations.  Providing b...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 21 21 Server Message Block 3.0 The Server Message Block (SMB) protocol is a network file sharing protocol that allows applications to read, create, update, and access files or other resources at a remote server. The SMB protocol can be used ...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 23 23 Best Practices and Recommendations Fixed VHDs may be stored on SMB 3.0 files that are backed by block-level storage if the guest machine is running on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V (or a later version of Hyper-V). The only supported usag...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 25 25 Internet SCSI The Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) protocol is based on a storage networking standard that facilitates data transfers over the Internet and manages storage over long distances, all while enabling hosts t...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 27 27 With MPIO, Windows Server 2012 efficiently manages up to 32 paths between storage devices and the Windows host operating system, and provides fault-tolerant connectivity to storage. Further, as more data is consolidated on SANs, the po...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 29 29 Figure 17: Faster SAN-attached virtual machine migrations with ODX Best Practices and Recommendations If you are using SAS or FC in all clustered servers, all elements of the storage stack should be identical. It is required that the M...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 30 30 Host Resiliency with NIC Teaming NIC Teaming gives the ability to bond multiple high-speed network interfaces together into one logical NIC to support workload applications that require heavy network I/O and redundancy (Figure 18). Win...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 31 31 Best Practices and Recommendations We recommend that you use host-level NIC Teaming to increase resiliency and bandwidth. NIC Teaming supports up to 32 NICs from mixed vendors. It is important to have NICs within a team with the same s...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 32 32 In this path, the outgoing and incoming packets can be modified or examined before additional processing occurs. By accessing the TCP/IP processing path at different layers, ISVs can easily create firewalls, antivirus software, diagnos...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 33 33 Figure 20: PVLAN in Windows Server 2012 Best Practices and Recommendations VLANS and PVLANS can be a useful mechanism to isolate different Exchange infrastructures—for instance, a service provider hosting multiple unrelated Exchange in...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 35 35 Host Resiliency & VM Agility For mission-critical workloads, high availability and scalability are becoming increasingly important to ensure that all users can access data and applications whenever they want. Windows Server 2012 Hy...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 36 36 Best Practices and Recommendations All hardware should be certified for Windows Server 2012, and the failover cluster solution should pass all tests in the Validate a Configuration Wizard. For more information about validating a failov...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 38 38 Cluster Networking Before you begin to construct the failover cluster that will form the resilient backbone for key virtualized workloads, it is important to ensure that the networking is optimally configured. Clusters, as a minimum, r...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 39 39 Figure 24: High-level overview of cluster member converged networking configuration This converged approach can significantly reduce the number of physical NICs required in each host and, subsequently, the number of overall switch port...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 41 41 CAU supports an extensible architecture that helps to update the cluster node with node-updating tools and software updates that are not available from Microsoft or through Windows Update or Microsoft Update. Examples include custom so...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 42 42 controllers running on the same Hyper-V host can be migrated to different nodes to prevent loss of the domain in case of failure. Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V provides a cluster group property called AntiAffinityClassNames that can be a...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 44 44 Virtual Machine Configuration In addition to configuring and establishing the host server as a virtualization server with Hyper-V, it is important to design detailed architecture and system specifications for building virtual machines ...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 45 45 reports client access and server usage information of Exchange Server deployments. The reports and proposals provided by the MAP toolkit include a server consolidation report, server consolidation proposal, workload discovery report, a...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 47 47 Best Practices and Recommendations Crossing the NUMA boundary can reduce virtual performance by as much as 8 percent. Therefore, configure a virtual machine to use resources from a single NUMA node. 34 For Exchange Server, make sure th...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 48 48 Best Practices and Recommendations Microsoft does not support Dynamic Memory for virtual machines that run any of the Exchange 2013 roles . Exchange 2013 uses in-memory data caching to provide better performance and faster I/O operatio...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 50 50 The best practices below provide more guidance around planning and managing memory for virtual machines running Exchange 2013 workloads. 42, 43, 44 Best Practices and Recommendations For any virtual machine that is running Exchange 201...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 51 51 VHDX File Format Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012 introduces VHDX, a new version of the virtual hard disk format that is designed to handle current and future workloads. VHDX has a much larger storage capacity than the older VHD format. ...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 52 52 Best Practices and Recommendations Using differencing disks and dynamically expanding disks is not supported in a virtualized Exchange 2013 environment . The thin-provisioned nature of the dynamically expanding VHDX file means that the...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 53 53 Guest Storage In addition to presenting VHD or VHDX files to Exchange 2013 virtual machines, administrators can choose to connect the guest operating system of an Exchange virtual machine directly to existing storage investments. Two m...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 54 54 Exchange 2013 Virtual Machine Network Considerations Networking and network access are critical to the success of an Exchange deployment. Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V provides a number of capabilities, technologies, and features that an...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 57 57 If the Exchange virtual machine is configured to use SR-IOV, but the guest operating system does not support it, SR-IOV VFs are not allocated to the virtual machine. We recommend that you disable SR-IOV on all virtual machines that run...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 59 59 Exchange 2013 Resiliency The backbone of business communication, messaging solutions require high availability. Exchange 2013 provides advanced capabilities to deliver a messaging solution that is always available. Moreover, the data i...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 60 60 Single Exchange 2013 Virtual Machine on a Hyper-V Cluster For smaller organizations that require only a single Exchange 2013 server but still need a high level of availability, a good option is to run the Exchange 2013 server as a virt...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 61 61 ensures that even under contention, the Exchange 2013 virtual machine, upon failover, will successfully start and receive the resources it needs to perform at the desired levels—taking resources from other currently running virtual mac...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 65 65 System Center 2012 SP1 System Center 2012 SP1 provides several components that give IT the ability to streamline infrastructure management and—as discussed in this guide specifically—to better deploy, manage, maintain, and protect Exch...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 66 66 Centralized Fabric Configuration System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) enables the IT administrator to quickly and easily configure and manage virtualization hosts, networking, and storage resources in order to create an...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 67 67 data from VSS-aware applications. VMM uses the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to ensure that data is backed up consistently while the server continues to service user requests. VMM uses this read-only snapshot to create a VHD. For a ...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 69 69 Once the template is created, you can start to use some other profiles to enhance the template and accelerate deployment of virtual machines that have specific applications within them. One such key profile is the application profile. ...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 70 70 Figure 41: System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager – Intelligent Placement Intelligent Placement in VMM inputs host system data, workload performance history, and administrator-defined business requirements into sophisticated al...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 71 71 Dynamic Optimization Once Exchange 2013 virtual machines have been deployed onto the Hyper-V cluster, VMM actively monitors key cluster and host metrics—such as CPU, Memory, Disk, and Network—to see if it can better balance the virtual...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 72 72 Virtual Machine Priority and Affinity If you deploy virtual machines on a host cluster, you can use VMM to configure priority settings for them. With these settings, the cluster starts or places high-priority virtual machines before me...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 73 73 Figure 44: System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager – Availability Set for Exchange Virtual Machines Best Practices and Recommendations When creating a DAG or CAS array virtualized on top of a Hyper-V host cluster, consider keepi...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 75 75 Users who are part of the newly created group can then access the cloud and associated virtual machine templates and service templates through the VMM console or, for a true self-service experience, through System Center 2012 SP1 App C...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 77 77 Once the virtual machine is deployed, the Exchange administrator can access it through App Controller and perform the tasks and actions that the IT administrator has enabled (Figure 50). The Exchange administrator also can connect to t...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 78 78 Service Manager  IT service management : System Center 2012 SP1 Service Manager provides an integrated platform for automating and adapting your organization’s IT service management best practices, such as those found in Microsoft Ope...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 79 79 Orchestrator  Custom automation : System Center 2012 SP1 Orchestrator provides tools to build, test, debug, deploy, and manage automation in your environment. These automated procedures, called runbooks , can function independently or...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 80 80 unanticipated errors and shorten service delivery time by automating the common tasks associated with enterprise tools and products.  End-to-end orchestration : Orchestration is the collective name for the automated arrangement, coord...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 83 83 Operations Manager Microsoft has a long history of defining and refining monitoring capabilities for its products. System Center 2012 SP1 Operations Manager continues this tradition as a solution with a deeper level of insight and impr...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 86 86 The Exchange 2013 Management Pack provides simple but powerful views that makes it easy and fast to determine if your organization is healthy. However, the views are also robust and structured in a way to quickly guide you to the root ...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 89 89 Conclusion Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V is a great fit for virtualizing Exchange 2013 workloads. As demand for virtualization technology grows, Microsoft has continued to make it easier for organizations to choose to virtualize workload...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 90 90 Additional Resources For more information, please visit the following links: Exchange 2013 for IT Pros http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/fp179701.aspx Exchange 2013 Virtualization http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj...

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013 91 91 References 1 Microsoft. “Lab Validation Report: Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V and Exchange 2013.” http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/2/A/C2A36672-19B9-4E96-A1E0-8B99DED2DC77/ESG_Windows_Server_2012_with_Hyper-V_and%2...