Tag Archives: support

Microsoft Exchange on Nutanix Best Practice Guide

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I am pleased to announce that the Best Practice guide for Microsoft Exchange on Nutanix is released and can be found here.

For me deploying MS Exchange on Nutanix with vSphere combines best of breed application level resiliency (in the form of Exchange Database Availability Groups), infrastructure and hypervisor technologies to provide an infrastructure with not only high performance, but with industry leading scalability, no silos and very high efficiency & resiliency.

All of this leads to overall lower CAPEX/OPEX for customers.

In summary by Virtualizing MS Exchange on Nutanix, customers realize several key benefits including:

  • Ability to use a standard platform for all workloads in the datacenter, thus allowing the removal of legacy silos resulting in lower overall cost, and increased operational efficiencies.
    • An example of this is no disruption to MS Exchange users when performing Nutanix / Hypervisor or HW maintenance
  • A highly resilient , scalable and flexible MS Exchange deployment.
  • Reducing the number of Exchange Mailbox servers required to maintain 4 copies of Exchange data thanks to the combination of NDFS + DAG. (2 copies at NDFS layer / 2 copies at DAG layer)
  • Eliminate the need for large / costly refresh cycles of HW as individual nodes can be added and removed non disruptively.
  • Simplified architecture, no need for complex sizing architecture or risk of over sizing day 1, start small and scale VMs, Compute or storage if/when required.
  • No dependency of specific HW, Exchange VMs can be migrated to/from any Nutanix node and even to non Nutanix nodes.
  • Full support from Nutanix including at the Exchange, Hypervisor and Storage layers with support from Microsoft via Premier Support contracts or via TSANet.
  • Lower CAPEX/OPEX as Exchange can be combined with new or existing Nutanix/Virtualization deployment.
  • Reduced datacenter costs including Power, Cooling , Space (RU)

I hope you enjoy the Best Practice guide and look forward to hearing about your MS Exchange on Nutanix questions & experiences.

Virtualizing Exchange on vSphere with NFS backed storage?

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For many years, customers have been realising the benefits of file based storage from one or more of the many storage vendors offering NFS.

NFS makes a ton of sense for virtualization, and virtualizing Business Critical applications such as Exchange, along with the rest of a company’s servers, can be a great way to reduce complexity and save on CAPEX/OPEX.

However, some vendors, have licensing or support statements which make this more difficult than it needs to be.

One such vendor is Microsoft.

Microsoft currently don’t support Exchange running inside a VMDK on an NFS datastore, even though the VMDK is a virtual SCSI device and acts/performs the same as if it was on a block based LUN, such as FC/FCoE or iSCSI.

I decided to reach out to a bunch of great guys in the virtualization community to try and get some awareness of this issue, and get Microsoft to update the outdated and technically invalid support statement.

As a result, the following TechNet forum article has been posted

Support for Exchange Databases running within VMDKs on NFS datastores

There is also a suggestion in the Microsoft Product improvement forum on the same topic, which as a result of the communities efforts in the past few weeks, have seen it sky rocket to the #1 improvement suggestion to microsoft.

The post and voting can be found here.

Support storing Exchange datat on VMDKs on File shares (NFS/SMB)

So please check out these two articles, and vote and leave your comments in support of this issue. Supporting Exchange in VMDKs on NFS is a No lose situation for customers, and that is what it is all about!

Related Articles:

Integrity of Write I/O for VMs on NFS Datastores Series

Part 1 – Emulation of the SCSI Protocol
Part 2 – Forced Unit Access (FUA) & Write Through
Part 3 – Write Ordering
Part 4 – Torn Writes
Part 5 – Data Corruption

Example Architectural Decision – Jumbo Frames for IP Storage (Do not use Jumbo Frames)

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Problem Statement

When using IP based storage over a converged 10GB network, should Jumbo Frames be used?

Requirements

1. Fully Supported storage

2. Maximum vSphere environment availability

3. Maximize performance where possible

Assumptions

1. Converged 10GB Network which is highly available

2. Two (or more) 10GB connections per ESXi host

Constraints

1. No dedicated network for IP storage traffic

Motivation

1. Simplify the environment

Architectural Decision

Do not use Jumbo Frames

Justification

1. Reduce the complexity in the environment for initial implementation

2. Simplify ongoing support / troubleshooting

3. For a Jumbo Frame to be transmitted without fragmentation, All devices end to end must support and be configured for Jumbo Frames

4. While there can be performance benefits of Jumbo Frames for IP Storage this is not generally seen across the board and depends on I/O types

5. Ensure IP storage packets are not fragmented or dropped by mis-configured devices or devices that do not support Jumbo Frames

6. Storage performance for the virtual environment will generally be constrained by the storage array controllers not the storage area network

7. Ensure packet fragmentation does not occur as all devices support a default MTU of 1500

8. Increasing the MTU will decrease the number of packets required for the same bandwidth but where the bottleneck is throughput (bytes) there will be minimal/no benefit

9. Jumbo Frames will only assist where the network is constrained at an interrupt level

Implications

1. IP Storage may have reduced performance in some circumstances compared to what Jumbo Frames may offer

Alternatives

1. Use Jumbo Frames

Relates Articles

1. Example Architectural Decision – Jumbo Frames for IP Storage (Use Jumbo Frames)

 Contributors

Thanks to Rob McNab (IBM) and Peter McCrystal (IBM) for their input into this example architectural decision.