Specifications

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013

 Hyper-V Remote Desktop Virtualization Service (vmicrdv)

 Hyper-V Volume Shadow Copy Requestor Service (vmicvss)

Integration Services in a child partition communicate over a VMBus with components in the parent

partition virtualization stack that are implemented as virtual devices (VDev). The VMBus supports high-

speed, point-to-point channels for secure interpartition communication between child and parent

partitions. A dedicated VDev manages each of the parent partition Integration Services functions, just as

each dedicated service manages the different Integration Services functions in a child partition. Through

this architecture, Integration Services components provide enhanced functionality and performance for

mouse, keyboard, display, network, and storage devices installed in a virtual machine. More information

about Integration Services components is available on the TechNet Wiki.

For each virtual machine, you can configure automatic stop and start behavior if a physical computer

shuts down. The options for stop are as follows:

 Save state: The current state of the virtual machine is saved. When the virtual machine is started,

Hyper-V attempts to restore the virtual machine to the state it was in.

 Turn off: This is the equivalent of pulling the power plug on a server.

 Shut down the guest operating system: This is the equivalent of shutting down a computer by

using the Windows shut down option.

Best Practices and Recommendations

For an Exchange 2013 virtual machine, do not configure the virtual machine to save state. We

recommend that you configure the virtual machine to use a shut down because it minimizes the

chance that the virtual machine can be corrupted. When a shut down happens, all jobs that are

running can finish, and there will be no synchronization issues when the virtual machine restarts (for

example, a Mailbox role server within a DAG replicating to another DAG member).

The opposite of an automatic stop is an automatic start. Hyper-V provides the following options when the

physical server restarts:

 Do nothing: You must start the virtual machine manually regardless of its state when the physical

server shut down.

 Automatically start: This option can be used if the virtual machine was running when the service

stopped.

 Always start this virtual machine automatically: Hyper-V starts the virtual machine regardless

of its state when the physical server shut down.

Best Practices and Recommendations

We recommend that you select either of the first two options for automatic start. Both options are

acceptable; however, the decision is ultimately up to the IT team that manages and maintains the

virtual environment. In addition to the listed start options, you can configure a start time delay for a

virtual machine. By doing so, you reduce resource contention on a virtualization host. However, if

your start option is to do nothing, this is not an issue.