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Keep Exchange Server functions separate or together?

Greetings all and a good new year to everyone.

I am setting up a test environment for implementing Exchange 2010 under VMware 5 environment. Among others sources I have downloaded is an article from VMware covering Best Practices for Exchange 2010 on VMWare:

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/exchange-2010-on-vmware-best-practices-guide.pdf

FYI this is an excellent article for anyone looking for reference materials on this implementation.

My question is whether industry practice leans towards setting up the Hub Transport, Mailbox and CAS servers as separate VM's, or if it is recommended to combine 2 or more functions in a single VM. My client base is in the SMB market, so the number of users for a given client would range from min. 5 to up to 75 users. I will be migrating all existing Exchange 2003 + Windows 2003 environments to 2010 and VMware in the next few months. I don't anticipate budget issues in acquiring the necessary (Dell) hardware for any given implementation.

As this is purely a recommendation question, I am setting the points at 150.

Thanks in advance

jkirman

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Will Szymkowski

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piattnd

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piattnd

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Simon Butler (Sembee)

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jkirman

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Thanks to all for your responses. I've raised the overall point total to 500 and split it across the 4 responses. You've collectively indicated that splitting out roles ends up with increased overhead, licensing etc. and that WNLB should not be used. The links offered look quite helpful. Thanks to Spec01 for mentioning that all roles on 1 server will prohibit use of DAG. Will continue research and testing but appreciate all responses. Wishing a good Monday to all,

jkirman