Exchange 2010 and NFS

[PaulVM]

I have found out that Exchange 2010 isn't supported by Microsoft on NFS datastores.
I also beleive that Veeam doesn't support iSCSI attached LUNs to VMs.

Therefore is the only option to use iSCSI or FC Datastores for Exchange and Veeam

[Gostev]

I have found out that Exchange 2010 isn't supported by Microsoft on NFS datastores.

That is, literally - physical Exchange 2010 servers using NFS to host mailbox stores.

VMware is the whole different story though, ESXi fully supports NFS storage.
And, obviously, virtualized Exchange never interacts with NFS directly.

Plenty of Veeam customers are using NFS storage to host all of their virtual workloads, including Exchange.

[PaulVM]

This is on Microsofts website:

The storage used by the Exchange guest machine for storage of Exchange data (for example, mailbox databases or Hub transport queues) can be virtual storage of a fixed size (for example, fixed virtual hard disks (VHDs) in a Hyper-V environment), SCSI pass-through storage, or Internet SCSI (iSCSI) storage. Pass-through storage is storage that's configured at the host level and dedicated to one guest machine. All storage used by an Exchange guest machine for storage of Exchange data must be block-level storage because Exchange 2010 doesn't support the use of network attached storage (NAS) volumes. Also, NAS storage that's presented to the guest as block-level storage via the hypervisor isn't supported. The following virtual disk requirements apply for volumes used to store Exchange data:

Virtual disks that dynamically expand aren't supported by Exchange.
Virtual disks that use differencing or delta mechanisms (such as Hyper-V's differencing VHDs or snapshots) aren't supported.

[Gostev]

I assume this article talks about Hyper-V. Moreover, about previous Hyper-V version only - no longer applicable to the latest version of Hyper-V, where they have just added full support for SMB3 NAS storage, and not seem to be placing any workload restriction on this new NAS storage type.

Again, plenty of Veeam customers run VMware on NFS storage, I am sure they will chime in soon. Although I personally would not use NFS with VMware for the reasons unrelated to what is being discussed here.

Anyhow, if you are considering the above statement to be the ultimate source of truth, then the answer to your original question is YES - with this restriction in place, you are left with FC, iSCSI, DAS or local storage for your Exchange VM's virtual disks.

[tsightler]

I believe that this is the definitive document from Microsoft Exchange product team regarding support of NFS datastores, no matter the hypervisor in use. While they are unlikely to leave you hanging if you have serious Exchange issues, the statement of non-support generally means that you are on your own regarding performance issues or other storage related problems. Even Netapp, the champion of NFS, only show FC/iSCSI LUNs with Exchange in their most recent documents, and clearly warn customers that NFS is not supported for Exchange databases, here's a snippet from the "Exchange 2010 on vSphere, Cisco UCS with Netapp primary storage" document:

It is important to note that there are several different shared-storage options available to ESX (iSCSI,
Fibre Channel, NAS, etc.); however, Microsoft does not currently support NFS for the Mailbox Server
role (clustered or standalone). For Mailbox servers that belong to a Database Availability Group, only
Fibre Channel is currently supported; iSCSI can be used for standalone mailbox servers.

Of course, not supported does not mean it doesn't work, I'm sure it will work just fine in most cases, but if you have a performance issues with Exchange, and you are running with an unsupported datastore configuration, they probably won't bother to help you very much. Read more here as well: http://www.thecabal.org/2011/10/exchang ... e-gotchas/

[dellock6]

Even snapshots are officially not supported in Exchange 2010, but I've never seen any customers avoiding it if Exchange is installed on virtual... Those vendors statements needs sometimes to be taken with a grain of salt...

[tsightler]

I completely agree, but it's difficult for many customers to ignore them. Most administrators don't want to be on the hook when, sometime down the road, there is a problem and Microsoft uses something like this as a reason not to support them. I think it's unlikely to happen, but I can understand the concern.

[cfizz34]

Does anyone know if the local VMDK that is on NFS attached storage is now supported?

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/micros ... Id=1037959

[dellock6]

Hi Chad, this table is about the clustering solutions that are supported on VMware, mostly regarding the shared disks between cluster nodes.
But you still have to consider Microsoft support more than VMware support since Exchange is their own application, and Exchange is still only supported on Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and DAS, and not on NFS. This doesn't mean it doesn't work, but it will lack official support from Microsoft if you need to engage them.
Official answer, if needed as justification, is here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... .150).aspx