Specifications

Best Practices for Virtualizing and Managing Exchange 2013
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Figure 44: System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager – Availability Set for Exchange Virtual Machines
Best Practices and Recommendations
When creating a DAG or CAS array virtualized on top of a Hyper-V host cluster, consider keeping
the individual Exchange 2013 roles on separate hosts. If one physical host is lost, it will only take
down a single node of the DAG or CAS array because the availability set within VMM will have
ensured that the DAG/CAS array nodes are running on separate hosts on the Hyper-V cluster.
Private Clouds
A cloud can be defined as the set of hardware, networks, storage, services, and interfaces that combine to
deliver aspects of computing as a service. Cloud services include the delivery of software, infrastructure,
and storage over the Internet (as either separate components or a complete platform) based on user
demand. A private cloud is a cloud infrastructure that is provisioned and managed on-premises or off-
premises by an organization or a third party. The private cloud is deployed using the organization’s own
hardware to capitalize on the advantages of the private cloud model. Through VMM, an organization can
quickly and easily manage the private cloud definition, access to the private cloud, and the underlying
physical resources (Figure 45). It also can provide granular, role-based access to end users, application
owners, or in the case of this white paper, Exchange administrators.
Figure 45: System Center 2012 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager – Create Cloud Wizard
In VMM, a private cloud provides the following benefits:
 Resource pooling: Through the private cloud, administrators can collect and present an
aggregate set of resources, such as storage and networking resources. Resource usage is limited
by the capacity of the private cloud and by user role quotas.
 Opacity: Self-service users have no knowledge of the underlying physical resources.