mkarnofel
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Exchange 2007 in a production virutal environment
Does anyone know the licensing ramifications of running Exchange Standard 2007 in a virtualized environment. I plan to put this into production on a 2 box clustered system (for high availability purposes) running Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. Only the host operating systems and MS VS2005 will be clustered. The Exchange .vhd and .vmc will be on shared storage. The idea is to have the virtual machine fail over to the other box on the cluster if there is a hardware issue. Do you know if I have to licences Exchange Enterprise, or more than one copy of Exchange with this configuration?
Alvin Abraham
No you just need 1 license, because it's one virutal name.
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Good idea but this setup will most likely result in an admin nightmare.
Why not just cluster exchange on those boxes and forget VS200X?
Anyway, even if you call MS you will most likely not get a straight answer about their licensing.
...just speaking from experience with MS licensing, you will need two license. Because when you deploy any MS software you burn a license reguardless of how or what hardware it is deployed on.
You should contact MS license and get in writing what they tell you.
Why not just cluster exchange on those boxes and forget VS200X?
Anyway, even if you call MS you will most likely not get a straight answer about their licensing.
...just speaking from experience with MS licensing, you will need two license. Because when you deploy any MS software you burn a license reguardless of how or what hardware it is deployed on.
You should contact MS license and get in writing what they tell you.
ASKER
So far this is all great input. The main reason I don't want to just cluster two Exchanges is that I will have to purchase two licenses for Exchange Enterprise 2007. I only have 25 users. I'm interested in virtualizing because I can save money on hardware and software. I also will be virtualizing my sql server (even though sql 2005 comes out of the box with high availability options). Although, if Ex 2007 isn't supported in virtual server than this conversation is over.
Finally, I don't see why I would need two licenses with this scenario consider it will only ever be running on one machine at anytime (virtual as they may be). If the hardware fails, the clustered Virtual Server will take over and bring the VM up on the other hardware. No log shipping, no real clustering of exchange. I will need to test this to see how the performance is. Thoughts?
Finally, I don't see why I would need two licenses with this scenario consider it will only ever be running on one machine at anytime (virtual as they may be). If the hardware fails, the clustered Virtual Server will take over and bring the VM up on the other hardware. No log shipping, no real clustering of exchange. I will need to test this to see how the performance is. Thoughts?
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