VMware vSphere 4 - Exchange Server on NetApp NFS, iSCSI and FC

Posted by Brian Gracely - Manager, Virtualization Architecture and Marketing

VMware recently releases this white paper, which highlights how Exchange 2007 performs across all three storage protocols in a real-world setup and stress environment.  

I really like this paper from both a joint partnership and technology perspective.  

NetApp & VMware Partnership

There are really three things that are required for a great partnership:  

1. Mutual Goals - Both of us are incredibly passionate about helping our customers be successful when they virtualize their data centers.
2. Education - We spend countless hours each quarter making sure that each other is trained and up to speed on the latest technologies and the best ways to use them. 
3. Trust -  When you have excellent talent on both sides of the partnership, trust allows engineers to be free to explore and find the best solutions for our customers.

I highlight this because this isn't a co-logo'd paper.  This was driven by VMware's Exchange experts.  We trust their judgment and expertise because we've worked together for several years and understand the strengths of both products in an Exchange environment.  

[NOTE: We're planning to have some co-logo'd Design Guides for Microsoft Apps (Exchange, Sharepoint, SQL) on vSphere and NetApp published for VMworld 2009]

Technology

What really excites me about this paper is the value that NetApp technology brings for Exchange on vSphere/ESX in both Production and Dev/Test environments. Let me highlight some of those areas:

Unified Storage:  VMware choose to use the NetApp FAS platform because it's able to support Exchange across all three protocols on the same platform.  Not only does it allow customers the flexibility to choose how they want to deploy Exchange, but it also gives them the flexibility to deploy other applications on the same NetApp FAS platform with any protocol.  

In addition, the paper highlights that iSCSI and FC LUNs are created within a volume, which allows mapping between those protocols to easily be remapped.  Again, highlighting flexibility for customers. That same flexibility will extend to FCoE as those deploys accelerate now that the standard is finalized.

Alignment:  VMware recommends that all virtual machines are aligned to the storage, per their best practices. Updated best practices for VM alignment can be found here.

Ease & Speed of Deployment:  I think this quote summarizes things pretty well, "To preserve this initialized state for the data, a snapshot of each of the data aggregates was taken on the NetApp array at this point. The snapshot is then used to reset mailbox databases back to the initialized state before each new test. The snapshot restore takes only a few seconds to complete, which is a big time savings over the hours it would take to reinitialize."  When you combine this with the power of the NetApp Rapid Cloning Utility, you're putting a very powerful set of tools in the hands of the Exchange, ESX or Storage administrator.

[NOTE:  RCU 2.1 is coming very soon (demos at VMworld 2009 in the NetApp booth) and will be doing some incredible things to expand upon existing RCU 2.0 goodness] 

Performance:  Not only does this paper show that NetApp's performance for virtualized Exchange rock, but it once again highlights what we showed in TR-3697 (being updated for vSphere as we speak, another co-logo'd NetApp/VMware doc).  Protocol performance, while similar when compared apples-to-apples is just one component of an overall solution.  Throw in storage efficiency, which we've highlighted for VMware virtualized environments many times, and we're giving customers an incredible amount of value and flexibility for one of their highest profile applications.  

We encourage you all to take a look at this excellent paper.  It highlights the value of Unified Storage and Storage Efficiency when used properly.  Whether you're deploying Exchange for Production or Dev/Test, we believe that the combination of NetApp and VMware provide all the tools you need to be incredibly successful at providing world-class Collaboration for your customers.  We're glad to help you get there.

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