VM Motion and Exchange

[diesel5111]

Hi,

I am new to the VMWare world and was wondering if anyone out there has experience running vmmotion to provide fail over for MS Exchange. I also would like to know about MS licensing. If I use vmmotion to fail over a server; would I need full licensing on another vmware server.

Thanks in advanced

 

[Roadki11]

From what i just read vmmotion is for migrating not really a failover solution and it looks like it just for ESX servers. but i could be wrong i never used it. anyway, from my understanding of MS licensing you can have a failover server and not license it as long as its not in production at the same time as the production server. once you failover to it you need to license it, and since you would only failover to it if the production server failed you are ok on licensing.

RoadKi11

 

[skialta]

You can however this is what you need to keep in mind:

1. VMotion as Roadki11 said is for migrating more than failover. You can move the VM from one host to another. Keep in mind that you need a SAN for this to happen. Also, keep in mind that you really need a fibre based SAN, not SATA.

2. For a true failover, you need ideally the Virtual Infrastructure Enterprise Edition which will give you HA, DRS and Consolidated Backup. HA and DRS will give you the true fault tollerance you seem to be looking for.

Since you're just moving the same VM from one host to another, Microsoft licensing doesn't come into play here.