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Handbook

1EDITOR’S NOTE

2THE BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES OF EXCHANGE VIRTUALIZATION

3VIRTUALIZING EXCHANGE 2010 ON vSPHERE? HERE’S WHAT TO KNOW

4TWO BARRIERS TO SUCCESSFUL EXCHANGE VIRTUALIZATION

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Virtualizing Microsoft Exchange ServerWhile virtualizing Exchange Server can reduce operational costs and simplify server management, choosing the best path is no simple process. You’ll need the right hypervisor, the right plan and the right skills to be sure your Exchange virtualization project delivers on its promise.

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Editor’s Note

The Benefits and Challenges

of Exchange Virtualization

Virtualizing Exchange 2010

on vSphere? Here’s What

to Know

Two Barriers to Successful

Exchange Virtualization

2 V I RTUA L I Z I N G M I C RO S O FT EXC H A N G E S E RV E R

1EDITOR’S NOTE

Exchange Virtualization: An Appealing (and Scary) Idea

It can be difficult to warm up to the idea of breaking down an essential and

reliable piece of your IT infrastructure, but that’s what you’re doing when you

consider virtualizing your organization’s Exchange Server. Even once you and

your company’s decision makers become comfortable with the idea, there’s the

complex task of actually putting your particular Exchange deployment to work on

a virtualization platform. It’s daunting enough to make even seasoned IT profes-

sionals wonder why they ever entertained the notion.

But while virtualizing Exchange is a complex task, it’s not an impossible one.

And, if done correctly, it has significant advantages in terms of cost savings and

more flexible management.

This handbook will help you sort through the platform options and plan for a

successful virtualization effort. Exchange MVP Andy Grogan discusses the ways

a typical physical Exchange deployment might benefit from virtualization. He

explains how to evaluate your particular IT organization to determine how you

should go about selecting a hypervisor that fits, and he offers suggestions on how

to proceed depending on which version of Exchange you will be virtualizing.

Virtualization specialist David Davis offers guidance on how you might use

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1EDITOR’S NOTE

vSphere, the market-leading hypervisor platform, to virtualize Exchange. Ex-

change expert Devin Ganger, meanwhile, details two specific obstacles that could

derail a successful Exchange virtualization initiative.

We hope the guidance here will ease some of the concerns you might have

about virtualized Exchange, and provide some particular recommendations for

how to make the effort pay off. n

Phil Sweeney

Managing Editor, TechTarget

Data Center and Virtualization Group

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2BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES

The Benefits and Challenges of Exchange Virtualization

Since Exchange 2007, Microsoft has supported—with caveats—the virtual-

izing of Exchange Server on any hypervisor that is part of the Server Virtualiza-

tion Validation Program (SVVP). This was a popular decision with many Exchange

administrators, as it gave them the option to take

advantage of virtualization’s many efficiencies.

Having the capability to virtualize Exchange,

however, does not mean it is simple to do so. The

complexity of the task depends on the features of

your chosen vendor’s hypervisor, the version of Ex-

change and the Exchange roles that an administrator

plans to use. We’ll look at those considerations and

discuss the ways an organization should think about

selecting a vendor and product that are appropriate

in terms of scale and cost.

There are a number of good reasons an organiza-

tion might turn to virtualization, though the primary rationale will fall into one

or more of the following categories:

Microsoft has supported the virtualizing of Exchange Server on any hypervisor that is part of the Server Virtualization Validation Program.

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1.Cutting hardware and software expenditures.

2.Cutting data center costs (power, cooling, physical footprint).

3.Reducing overall running expenses.

4.Simplifying server management.

5.Increasing uptime, decreasing downtime, shortening recovery time

and reducing data loss.

To illustrate these points, let’s consider the simple Exchange 2010 SP3 physical

deployment shown in FIGURE 1.

FIGURE 1. A simple physical Exchange deployment

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FIGURE 1 provides an overview of the Exchange Servers and roles that might be

present within a typical Exchange 2010 physical deployment for a medium to

large enterprise. The setup and running costs for that environment, including

hardware, power, cooling, administration and operating system licensing, could be

significantly reduced through virtualization. Further savings in this example would

result from using Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition with Microsoft’s

Hyper-V, which allows you to license each physical host with virtualization rights.

There are, of course, other hypervisors you

might want to use in the above scenario, such as

those from Citrix and the ubiquitous VMware. The

main point is that you should be able to realize a

return on your virtualization investment, irrespec-

tive of the hypervisor platform.

Alternatively, if you do not wish to go the virtu-

alization route, you could look at achieving similar

outcomes by migrating your messaging infrastruc-

ture to a hosted/cloud offering such as Office 365.

This effectively outsources responsibility for your mail system.

It is true that by adopting a cloud model you can leverage some of the same

benefits to virtualization in terms of cost and administrative savings. But there

are potential downsides to placing your mail system in the cloud.

You should be able to realize a return on your virtualization investment, irrespective of the hypervisor platform.

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Many organizations are still struggling with the idea that having their data in

the cloud means losing sight of their information assets. This feeling is heightened

when a mail system contains confidential data. Reluctance about the cloud also

stems from concerns about maintaining uptime and connectivity. It can be wor-

risome to depend on a third party’s infrastructure, and it might be discomforting

to realize that upgrades and patching are performed on the third party’s timetable

and not yours.

VIRTUALIZATION OPTIONSThere are a number of approved hypervisors on the SVVP list, but the market has

three main players.

n VMware (vSphere). VMware Inc. is firmly established in the virtualization mar-

ket and its hypervisor is considered by many to be the industry standard. With

a relatively small Linux footprint on the host server and rich integration with a

number of hardware and storage platforms, it is seen as more mature and more

stable than its competitors. Those attributes make vSphere an attractive prospect

for virtualizing Exchange, though it is not the cheapest option and its enterprise

management features are not as integrated as those in products such as Microsoft

Hyper-V.

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n Citrix (XenServer). XenServer by Citrix Systems Inc., which is now in Version

6.1, is maturing rapidly into a viable alternative to products from VMware and

Microsoft. It is deployed as a Linux-based hypervisor on the XenServer host ma-

chine, and is considered less costly to run than vSphere. Even so, it has struggled

to gain traction because its earlier versions were light on the types of features that

had been established long ago in VMware.

n Microsoft (Hyper-V). At Version 3.0, Microsoft Hyper-V is a relative newcomer

to the virtualization market. It has quickly matured since its debut and can be run

on top of a full Windows graphical user interface or on Windows Server Core.

Naturally, Hyper-V integrates well with Windows platforms and has a wealth of

familiar management tools in the form of Microsoft System Center and the tra-

ditional Microsoft Management Console (MMC).

With Hyper-V being a core part of the Windows OS, it has a compelling licens-

ing model over that of both VMware and XenServer. For example, if you purchase

the Datacenter edition of Windows 2012 you get Hyper-V and can run an unlim-

ited number of Windows-based guests on that host.

Despite its licensing advantages and improving technology, Hyper-V still does

not have the pedigree of products like vSphere and it remains to be seen if Version

3.0 (released with Windows Server 2012) can make a noticeable dent in VMware’s

market lead.

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PLATFORM SELECTIONIn small to medium-sized deployments, there is little difference functionally

among the three main players. Distinctions become sharper, however, when build-

ing large, high-performing, highly available virtualization infrastructures. Because

of their high-end scalability features, vSphere and Hyper-V will make more sense

in those situations.

Beyond the scale of deployment and cost, consider other criteria when con-

templating platform options:

n Reputation. You’ll need to determine how important it is to you or your business

that you select a product that’s considered a market leader or that comes from a

favorite vendor.

n Support. Assess how well a vendor supports its products. You do not want to be

left on your own after making a purchase.

n Internal skill sets. Figure out if the skills within your organization are aligned

to a particular virtualization platform. This might influence which vendor you

standardize on.

n Simplicity. If your organization does not require all the high-end functionality

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1 0 V I RTUA L I Z I N G M I C RO S O FT EXC H A N G E S E RV E R


in the VMware and Microsoft products, does XenServer become more attractive?

From a specification point of view, TABLE 1 summarizes some of the metrics

worth considering when selecting a hypervisor. Look at which virtualization fea-

tures are supported by the Exchange version that you will be using. Check to see

TABLE 1. Quick features comparison table

HYPER-V (2012) XENSERVER (6.0) VSPHERE ENT+

Logical Processors (Cores) 320 64 160

Physical Memory 4 TB 1 TB 2 TB

vCPUs per Host 2048 160 2048

vCPUs per VM 64 16 32

RAM per VM 1 TB 128 GB 1 TB

Active VMs per Host 1024 130 512

Maximum VMs 4000 960 3000

Nodes per Cluster 64 16 32

Maximum Virtual Disk Size 64 TB VHDX 2 TB 2 TB VMDK

Port Mirroring Yes Yes Yes

HA Migration Yes Yes Yes

Live Storage Migration Yes No Yes

Network Virtualization Yes No Third-party

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if those features are within any one of the hypervisors in the table, how much you

intend to scale the environment over the next five years and how much money you

have available to spend.

When you consider virtualizing Microsoft Exchange, it is tempting to think it

makes more sense to use Microsoft’s Hyper-V to do the job. That’s not necessarily

the case. Exchange will virtualize well on almost any

hypervisor as long as the underlying platform has

been well architected. Since the chosen hypervisor

is only one part of the equation, you need to see

the entire landscape. That means looking at hosts,

storage, networking and hypervisor to see how well

they will work together.

It is true you can leverage some compelling

licensing and platform unification by going the

Hyper-V route with Exchange. From a techni-

cal perspective, though, you will not go wrong virtualizing Exchange on either

vSphere or XenServer.

SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONSDepending on the version of Exchange you are using, there are a number of

You can leverage some compelling licensing and platform unification by going the HyperV route with Exchange.

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variables you’ll need to take into account to ensure that any environment you

build remains supported by Microsoft. Some of these considerations will dictate

which features of the hypervisor platform you can use and the type of storage

configurations you can put in place.

n Exchange 2007. Exchange Server 2007 is supported in production using hard-

ware virtualization, but only when the chosen hypervisor is on the SVVP list.

Also, the Exchange guests must run Exchange 2007 SP1 or higher, and the Unified

Messaging server role cannot be virtualized.

You must also ensure that the storage used by the Exchange guests for Exchange

data (databases, transaction logs, queues, etc.) is block-level storage. Exchange

does not support using technologies such as network-attached storage (NAS).

It is important to note that Exchange does not support dynamically expanding

virtual disks, nor should you snapshot data disks or virtual machines within the

hypervisor. To remain supported operationally, you should not install software

other than antivirus, backup or virtualization management tools within the Ex-

change virtual guests. If you plan to use cluster continuous replication (CCR) and

single copy clusters (SCC), you can only do so when the native hypervisor high

availability (HA) is not used.

n Exchange 2010. For Exchange 2010 RTM, the support policy for virtualization

http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvp.htm

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is pretty much the same as for Exchange 2007. However, with 2010 Service Pack

1, Microsoft’s support stance changed so that now all Exchange 2010 server roles,

including Unified Messaging, are supported as a guest. Also, database availability

groups (DAGs) can be used in conjunction with hypervisor HA features as long

as the virtual machines are configured to shut down and cold boot or an online

migration (such as live migration or VMware vMotion) is used.

n Exchange 2013. The virtualization support stance for Exchange 2013 is almost

identical to Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1. To dive deeper, Microsoft’s TechNet

has detailed notes on the supported virtualization configurations.

HYPERVISOR PERFORMANCEIn considering a platform, there are many factors to examine. The hardware being

used, the storage infrastructure, the networking and storage interconnects, and

other virtual workloads within the same virtualized cluster can all play a part in

how well the overall system performs.

There can be a valid discussion about which platform scales best according to

how your organization’s needs change over time. In the case of medium to large

enterprises looking to run internal and external services within their infrastruc-

tures, perhaps your best options are Hyper-V and vSphere.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc794548(v=exchg.80).aspx

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Some in the business will insist that Hyper-V is not a valid deployment solu-

tion because it does not scale the way vSphere can. Others will argue that Mi-

crosoft already provides services to hundreds of thousands of its users each day

based on systems running Hyper-V.

The message here is to do your own research. Don’t let those with strong

opinions sway you toward a product that they prefer but that might not be right

for the job at hand. Find out how your requirements, skill sets and budget align

with the available products.

It’s important to evaluate each possible hypervisor and the underlying archi-

tecture so that you select a platform that will meet your organization’s needs in

a cost-effective and efficient way. —Andy Grogan

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3vSPHERE

Virtualizing Exchange 2010 on vSphere? Here’s What You Need to Know

Although virtualizing Exchange Server 2010 might seem like the end-

game, the process is rarely straightforward and optimal deployment strategies

aren’t always obvious. Administrators must take additional steps to optimize

performance, correct resource shortages or troubleshoot problems that arise as a

consequence of Exchange 2010 virtualization.

Many instances of virtualized Exchange 2010 run poorly because adminis-

trators didn’t do enough planning. The primary reason for unsatisfactory de-

ployments—or outright failures—is disregarding best practices. Here’s what

administrators need to know:

n When allocating processors, assign only multiple virtual CPUs (vCPUs) if you

can determine that your Exchange virtual machines (VMs) can really take ad-

vantage of the additional processors; otherwise, you’re wasting resources. Start

with the smallest number of vCPUs and work your way up as needed.

n Ensure that the total number of vCPUs assigned to all Exchange 2010 VMs is

equal to (or less than) the total number of cores on the ESX host machine. If you

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3vSPHERE

assign more vCPUs to mission-critical VMs than the physical host has avail-

able, you are overcommitting CPUs, and taking a chance that your Exchange

VMs won’t have CPU cycles when they’re needed. Instead of a 1:1 mapping

of cores to vCPUs, use CPU reservations to protect those CPU resources for

Exchange VMs.

n Overcommitting memory with VMware vSphere is common—and even rec-

ommended—but don’t overcommit memory when virtualizing Exchange 2010.

If you do, you’ll have to deal with memory ballooning, compression and pag-

ing—all of which will diminish performance.

n Use storage multi-pathing to ensure storage area network (SAN) availability.

VMware recommends providing a minimum of four paths from a VMware ESX

host to a storage array, which means the host requires at least two host bus

adapter (HBA) ports, two Fibre Channel ports and two SAN ports.

n Allocate separate network adapters and networks for vMotion, VMware fault-

tolerant logging traffic and ESX console access management. Use at least two

network adapters for Exchange production traffic to leverage VMware network

interface card (NIC) teaming capabilities. Generally, at least four network

adapters are recommended per ESX host.

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/paging

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/paging

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/definition/VMware-NIC-teaming-VMware-network-interface-card-teaming

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/definition/VMware-NIC-teaming-VMware-network-interface-card-teaming

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3vSPHERE

n Use the VMXNET3 virtual network adapter driver instead of the default E1000.

In mission-critical VMs like Exchange 2010, the paravirtualized VMXNET3

will result in better performance. Also, ensure that VMware Tools is installed

on each VM as the VMXNET3 virtual NIC driver.

n Don’t skimp on host server hardware. No amount of virtualization features can

fix old or slow hardware.

n When virtualizing Exchange 2010, make sure you’re up-to-date with the latest

service pack.

n Use vSphere High Availability (HA) to automatically restart your Exchange

VMs in the event of a host failure.

IMPROVE VIRTUALIZED EXCHANGE 2010 RESOURCE UTILIZATIONVirtualization is all about maximizing the resources of each physical server. But

you never want to over-maximize your resources by skimping on CPU, memory

and I/O allocation. That’s a recipe for poor application performance and end-user

complaints.

First, use resource pools and reservations. Reservations involve individual

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3vSPHERE

VMs, and resource pools create reservations for multiple VMs in the pool. These

tactics allow you to protect your Exchange 2010 VM’s CPU and memory resources

from other less-critical VMs with variable resource needs in the same infrastruc-

ture cluster.

For example, by creating a pool called “Exchange2010,” and putting all Exchange

VMs inside and setting CPU and memory reservations on that pool, you are en-

suring solid Exchange performance (at least for CPU and memory).

Next, use the VMware Distributed Resource

Scheduler (DRS), which monitors VMs in a cluster,

to ensure they’re receiving the CPU and memory

they are configured for on a particular ESXi host. If

the VMs aren’t getting the resources needed, DRS

automatically moves the VMs to another ESXi host.

Lastly, employ the Storage Distributed Resource

Scheduler (SDRS). The vSphere 5 SDRS does for

storage what DRS does for CPU and memory. If

Exchange VM virtual disks are experiencing high

latency in their current data store, or if the data store is about to run out of space,

SDRS will use Storage vMotion to move those VM virtual disks to another,

better-performing or spacious data store without downtime to end users and

applications.

If the VMs aren’t getting the resources needed, DRS automatically moves the VMs to another ESXi host.

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/definition/VMware-DRS

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/definition/VMware-DRS

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/definition/VMware-ESXi

http://searchvirtualstorage.techtarget.com/definition/Storage-Distributed-Resource-Scheduler-DRS

http://searchvirtualstorage.techtarget.com/definition/Storage-Distributed-Resource-Scheduler-DRS

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3vSPHERE

COMMON PROBLEMS WITH VIRTUALIZED EXCHANGE 2010 PERFORMANCEEven a well-planned and well-executed Exchange 2010 virtualization project is

likely to run into problems. These troubles typically involve resources and storage:

n You determine that an Exchange VM is performing poorly. Investigate each

VM’s performance and compare it to the performance monitored with the previ-

ous physical deployment. You’ll probably find that the afflicted VMs are short of

computing resources, so allocate additional resources to boost performance or use

vMotion to move the Exchange VM to another host.

n You determine that storage capacity for mailboxes is running short. It’s pos-

sible to deploy an archiving or purging system to control data growth, but this is a

separate project. Instead, use virtualization tools to dynamically expand VM disks

or add more virtual disks to a VM.

You might also need to add more physical disks or deploy other data-reduction

tactics, such as data deduplication. It’s also important to use capacity planning

techniques to ensure adequate storage over time.

n You determine that storage performance is inadequate. Storage performance

monitoring will reveal unexpected latency between the Exchange VMs and

the SAN. Use SDRS to move the virtual disk to another data store. As a more

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/data-deduplication

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3vSPHERE

permanent fix, you could address the underlying latency issue in the architecture.

In the end, the key to success when virtualizing Exchange 2010 is proper plan-

ning and education and the implementation of best practices. Exchange 2010

virtualization is proven, and advanced virtualization features will make Exchange

more reliable and improve uptime, while making the administrator’s life easier.

—David Davis

http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/tip/Improving-Exchange-2010-uptime-with-virtualization-and-HA-features

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4BARRIERS

Two Barriers to Successful Exchange Virtualization

With the various advances in hypervisor technology, deploying Exchange

Server in a virtual environment has become more attractive than ever. However,

certain factors stand in the way of successful virtualized Exchange deployments—

some of which admins may not have considered.

Virtualizing Exchange Server is an enticing option. After all, increased CPU and

memory capacity allow virtual Exchange machines to scale beyond the limitations

the previous generations of hypervisors imposed,

thereby reducing the number of virtual machines

needed for large deployments. Also, the parity gap

between virtual and physical Exchange environ-

ments has never been smaller.

On paper, virtualizing Exchange looks like a

smart decision. With any virtual Exchange deploy-

ment, however, you’ll always be bringing more com-

plexity to the table.

No matter how efficient the hypervisor, or how scalable your VMs can be, the

underlying assumption of virtualization—that applications don’t need to know

The parity gap between virtual and physical Exchange environments has never been smaller.

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4BARRIERS

about the actual hardware they’re running on if the hypervisor provides a good

enough emulation—doesn’t actually apply to Exchange Server.

Exchange Server goes to great measures to ensure that your messaging data is

always as safe as it can possibly be. Think of it this way: Anything that potentially

disrupts Exchange’s knowledge of the hardware is a potential data risk. This is

the same reason storage products that use file-level storage at any level between

Exchange and the physical disk blocks are not supported; file-level behavior here

is not the same as what the Exchange information store is expecting.

BARRIER #1: NETWORK DELAYSIntroducing network delays is the first way virtualization can destabilize Exchange

Server. These delays can potentially disrupt the delicately timed cluster heartbeat

communications between members of an Exchange database availability group

(DAG). There are four common reasons for network delays:

1.Mismatching network drivers and firmware. Hosts, patches, updates

and upgraded network drivers are sure to be applied over the lifetime of

the hypervisor. Many administrators forget that the VM network drivers

should also be upgraded to keep all the components of the network stack

synchronized.

http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/answer/How-to-update-an-Exchange-2010-database-availability-group

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4BARRIERS

2.Overloading virtual network switches. A shared virtual network switch

can—on overloaded hypervisor hosts or clusters—introduce network latency

or dropped packets. Exchange servers don’t require separate dedicated virtual

network switches, but be careful about what other traffic passes through those

switches.

3.Moving live Exchange VMs between hosts. Although the ability to move live

VMs is an oft-touted hypervisor feature, it produces a small but measurable

loss of network connectivity. This is often enough to make a DAG member

(which is unaware of the fact that it is moving from one hypervisor host to

another) momentarily drop out of the cluster. This forces an unplanned failover

of all active databases, and sometimes even causes the replication service to

fail. This doesn’t result in data loss, but it can reduce the number of available

replicas, thereby reducing the overall level of redundancy.

4.Associating different types of traffic to the same host interfaces. The typi-

cal hypervisor host will have two or three sets of host interfaces: management,

storage and client traffic. For an Exchange VM that is also a DAG member, these

might not be enough. Associating the VM’s replication network interface to

any of these physical host interface groups can inject network instability, caus-

ing hard-to-troubleshoot cluster membership dropouts and database failovers.

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4BARRIERS

Over time, network issues can have a significant impact on the reliability and

perceived stability of the DAG.

BARRIER #2: BUILT-IN SAFETY MECHANISMSAllowing hypervisors and/or administrators to circumvent Exchange’s built-in

data safety mechanisms is the other major way virtualization can destabilize Ex-

change Server.

Consider these facts:

n Exchange never permits two replicas of the same database to be created on the

same server. However, if two DAG member VMs are put on the same physical

host, that’s exactly what you can end up with.

n Even if two Exchange VMs on the same host don’t share database replica cop-

ies, that host becomes a potential source of risk for the health of the DAG if

they’re members of the same DAG. A DAG that fails because of bugs and pro-

cedural errors can take out an entire hypervisor cluster.

n Many inter-role transactions in an Exchange system exhibit different behaviors

depending on how the Exchange roles are colocated. Exchange has no way to

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4BARRIERS

detect situations where the mailbox and hub transport roles, or two hub trans-

port roles, are on the same physical host. In these cases, a host-level failure can

result in the loss of the transport dumpster or shadow redundancy informa-

tion, therefore resulting in the loss of messaging data.

Careful consideration of potential VM placement under all conditions is the

key to preventing these types of issues. Some organizations end up deploying

Exchange across more hypervisor hosts than they had originally planned—a situ-

ation that reduces the level of consolidation and increases overall cost. In many

cases, changes to default VM configuration and to standard operations procedures

are necessary to ensure appropriate VM constraints are observed.

It’s certainly possible to build a reliable Exchange deployment in a virtualized

environment. The secret is to know what factors to consider, plan for and test in

order to ensure that the virtualization configuration is not also increasing the risk

of a service outage or data loss.

Carefully evaluate your plans to make sure that the additional costs and changes

are worth the actual level of consolidation you will likely achieve. That evaluation

might lead you to decide that virtualizing Exchange right now might not pay off.

—Devin Ganger

http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/definition/hub-transport-server-HT-server

http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/tip/How-Exchange-Server-2010-Shadow-Redundancy-prevents-message-loss

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AUTHOR BIOS

ANDY GROGAN, an Exchange MVP based in the U.K., has worked in the IT industry for 14 years—primarily with Microsoft, HP and IBM technolo-gies. His main passion is Exchange Server, but he also specializes in Active Directory, SQL Server and storage tools. Grogan works for a large coun-cil in West London as the networks and operations manager supporting 6,000 customers on more than 240 sites. You can visit his website at www.telnetport25.com.

DAVID DAVIS is the author of the best-selling VMware vSphere video training library from TrainSignal. He has written hundreds of virtu-alization articles on the Web, is a vExpert, VCP, VCAP-DCA, and CCIE #9369 with more than 18 years of enterprise IT experience. His website is VMwareVideos.com.

DEVIN GANGER is a messaging architect and tech-nical writer with more than 15 years of experience in administering messaging systems, Windows, Unix and TCP/IP networks. Today, he works pri-marily with Exchange Server, Windows Active Directory and related Microsoft and third-party technologies. Ganger was recognized as a Micro-soft MVP for Exchange Server from 2007 to 2011.

Virtualizing Microsoft Exchange Server is a SearchExchange.com e-publication.

Margie Semilof | Editorial Director

Lauren Horwitz | Executive Editor

Phil Sweeney | Managing Editor

Eugene Demaitre | Associate Managing Editor

Laura Aberle | Associate Features Editor

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Rebecca Kitchens | Publisher [email protected]

TechTarget 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466

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