Best practices to virtualize exchange 2007 server

Ryan Lin
Ryan Lin used Ask the Experts™
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Hi all,


I have a physical exchange server 2007 on premise. we are switching the mail server to office 365 and I keep the current server for a while.  just in case, things didn't work the way we want. in addition, the server is leased so we have to return the equipment on the time.
we are thinking to virtualize the exchange server because we have already the ESXi 5 host in place. what will be the best way to do it.
Thanks
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Senior Solution Architect
Most Valuable Expert 2015
Top Expert 2015
Commented:
If you are going to virtualize the server make sure that the VM has the exact same resouces that were allocated in production. Also when you take a snapshot of the Exchange server you need to make sure that all of the Exchange services are stopped and database are dismounted.

This is so that logs are no longer being written. Once this is done offline then you can snapshot the Exchange Server.

There are also other tools/utilities like "Double Take" that can do this live. However i suggest you perform it offline to ensure that nothing goes wrong or logs do not get missed.

Will.
Ryan Lin

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Commented:
Hi Will,


I was reading into some article on VMware Cold Clone.
Will it be the way to go?


Ryan

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