Earlier this year, I wrote a three-part series of columns about Exchange Server virtualization, starting with "Exchange Server Virtualization: Microsoft's Support" . In the second part, "Exchange Server Virtualization: Hyper-V Possibilities," I talked about what I expected Microsoft to support for Exchange 2007 virtualization with Windows Server 2008’s Hyper-V technology—once the company got around to giving us any official information on the matter. On August 19, Microsoft finally ended the waiting and announced its support policies for running virtual Exchange 2007 SP1. So now we know Microsoft officially supports Exchange Server 2007 SP1 running under Hyper-V. The support statement, "Microsoft Support Policies and Recommendations for Exchange Servers in Hardware Virtualization Environments," features a wealth of interesting information. First off, Exchange 2007 SP1 is supported for virtualization only when running on a virtualized instance of Server 2008; because Virtual Server 2005 doesn’t (and won’t) support 64-bit guest virtual machines (VMs), Exchange 2007 is only officially supported on Hyper-V. It’s possible that Microsoft might support VMware’s server virtualization solutions in the future; VMware will have to meet the requirements of the Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). Chris Wolf, a senior analyst for the Burton Group, reported that VMware had joined the SVVP , but we’ll have to wait until Microsoft or VMwa ...
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