SnapManager for Exchange on VMware

[HAZNETAPP]

Hi All,

Can you help me with a best practice disk config.

We are running a virtual Exchange 2010 environment on VMware vSphere 5.0. 

I understand SnapManager for exchange requires RDM's as opposed to VMDK's.  Can you confirm which compatibility mode is required, Physical or Virtual, I have assumed and used Physical??

Also, I have created the Luns on the Netapp rather than via SnapDrive, is this correct?

Thanks

Alex

[radek_kubka]

Hi Alex,

You should always create LUNs using SnapDrive - unless there are no plans to install it, but this would exclude SME, too.

You can't use VMDKs for Exchange, but you still have two choices:

1) RDMs - it used to be the case that SnapDrive only supported physical mode, not sure if that's still the case, but definitely physical is a safe bet

2) in-guest iSCSI initiator - could be useful if there are plenty of LUNs on the same ESX cluster, this way you avoid hitting the per cluster LUN count limit, as all traffic bypasses ESX stack.

Regards,

Radek

[HONGWEIWANG]

I'm working on a virtualization project.  Ms Exchange2010, Vmware ESXi5.1.

I use RDM(physical) for VM,and in test environment, SDR can still use in VM(ESXi server in a MPIO architecture).

[HAZNETAPP · Accepted solution]

Thank you for your response.

I have set SME up now and all is working as expected.

I have used Physical RDM's.  For reference virtual mode RDM's are not supported.