Microsoft Exchange 2013 System Requirements
Before
you install Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 Preview, we recommend that you
review this topic to ensure that your network, hardware, software, clients, and
other elements meet the requirements for Exchange 2013 Preview. In addition,
make sure you understand the coexistence scenarios that are supported for
Exchange 2013 Preview and earlier versions of Exchange.
The
following table lists the scenarios in which coexistence between Exchange 2013
Preview and earlier versions of Exchange are supported.
Coexistence of Exchange 2013 Preview and earlier
versions of Exchange Server
|
Exchange version
|
Exchange organization coexistence
|
|
Exchange
Server 2003 and earlier versions
|
Not
supported
|
|
Exchange
2007
|
Not
supported with Exchange 2013 Preview. Coexistence with Exchange 2007 will be
supported in the release to manufacturing (RTM) version of Exchange 2013.
|
|
Exchange
2010
|
Not
supported with Exchange 2013 Preview. Coexistence with Exchange 2010 will be
supported with Exchange 2013 RTM.
|
|
Mixed
Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2007 organization
|
Not
supported with Exchange 2013 Preview. Coexistence with Exchange 2007 and
Exchange 2010 will be supported with Exchange 2013 RTM.
|
Network
and directory servers
The
following table lists the requirements for the network and the directory
servers in your Exchange 2013 Preview organization.
Network
and directory server requirements for Exchange 2013 Preview
|
Component
|
Requirement
|
|
Schema
master
|
By
default, the schema master runs on the first Windows Server 2012 or Windows
Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2003 domain
controller installed in a forest. The schema master must be running any of
the following:
|
|
Global
catalog server
|
In each
Active Directory site where you plan to install Exchange 2013 Preview, you
must have at least one global catalog server running any of the following:
For
more information about global catalog servers, see What is the Global Catalog.
|
|
Domain
controller
|
In each
Active Directory site where you plan to install Exchange 2013 Preview, you
must have at least one writeable domain controller running any of the
following:
|
|
Active
Directory forest
|
Active
Directory must be at Windows Server 2003 forest functionality mode or higher.
|
|
IPv6
Support
|
IPv6 is
supported only when IPv4 is also used; a pure IPv6 environment isn't
supported. Using IPv6 addresses and IP address ranges is supported only when
both IPv6 and IPv4 are enabled on that computer, and the network supports
both IP address versions. If Exchange 2013 Preview is deployed in this
configuration, all server roles can send data to and receive data from
devices, servers, and clients that use IPv6 addresses. Exchange 2013 Preview
support is similar to support for Exchange Server 2007.
|
The use
of 64-bit Active Directory domain controllers increases directory service
performance for Exchange 2013 Preview.
|
|
|
In
multi-domain environments, on Windows Server 2008 domain controllers that
have the Active Directory language locale set to Japanese, your servers may
not receive some attributes that are stored on an object during inbound
replication. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article
949189, A Windows Server 2008 domain controller that is configured
with the Japanese language locale may not apply updates to attributes on an
object during inbound replication.
|
For
security and performance reasons, we recommend that you install Exchange 2013
Preview only on member servers and not on Active Directory directory servers.
However, you can't run DCPromo on a computer running Exchange 2013 Preview.
After Exchange 2013 Preview is installed, changing its role from a member
server to a directory server, or vice versa, isn't supported.
Hardware
The
recommended hardware requirements for Exchange 2013 Preview servers vary
depending on a number of factors including the server roles that are installed
and the anticipated load that will be placed on the servers.
Hardware
requirements for Exchange 2013 Preview
|
Component
|
Requirement
|
Notes
|
|
Processor
|
|
See the
"Operating system" section later in this topic for supported
operating systems.
|
|
Memory
|
Varies
depending on Exchange features that are installed
|
Detailed
guidance is currently not available for Exchange 2013 Preview.
|
|
Paging
file size
|
The
page file size minimum and maximum must be set to physical RAM plus 10 MB
|
The
recommended page file size also accounts for the memory that's needed to
collect information if the operating system stops unexpectedly. On 64-bit
operating systems, memory can be written as a dump file to the paging file.
This file must reside on the boot volume of the server.
For
more information about the configuration options that are available for
memory dump data, see Knowledge Base article 254649, Overview of memory dump file options for Windows Vista,
Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP,
and Windows 2000.
|
|
Disk
space
|
|
The
minimum space requirements detailed here don't account for disk subsystem
requirements for adequate performance.
|
|
Drive
|
DVD-ROM
drive, local or network accessible
|
None.
|
|
Screen
resolution
|
800 x
600 pixels or higher
|
None.
|
|
File
format
|
Disk
partitions formatted as NTFS file systems, which applies to the following
partitions:
|
None.
|
Operating
system
The
following table lists the supported operating systems for Exchange 2013
Preview.
Supported
operating systems for Exchange 2013 Preview
|
Component
|
Requirement
|
|
Mailbox
and Client Access server roles
|
One of
the following:
|
|
Management
tools
|
One of
the following:
|
|
|
|
Exchange
2013 Preview doesn’t support being run on computers with the United States
Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) compliant settings enabled.
If you have FIPS enabled on computers running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1,
Exchange 2013 Preview will not function correctly. For more information, see
Knowledge Base article 811833, The effects of enabling the "System cryptography: Use
FIPS compliant algorithms for encryption, hashing, and signing" security
setting in Windows XP and in later versions of Windows.
|
Exchange
2013 Preview supports the following minimum versions of Microsoft Office
Outlook and Microsoft Entourage for Mac:
- Outlook 2013 Preview
- Outlook 2010 SP1 with April
2012 Cumulative Update
- Outlook 2007 SP3 with July
2012 Cumulative Update
- Entourage 2008 for Mac, Web
Services Edition
- Outlook for Mac 2011
|
|
|
The
information above provides the minimum versions required for a client to
connect to Exchange. We strongly recommend that you install the latest
available service packs and updates available so that your users receive the
best possible experience when connecting to Exchange.
|
Outlook
clients earlier than Outlook 2007 are not supported. Email clients on Mac
operating systems that require DAV, such as Entourage 2008 for Mac RTM and
Entourage 2004, are not supported.
Outlook
Web App supports several browsers on a variety of operating systems and
devices. For detailed information, see Supported Browsers for Outlook Web App.
Hardware
virtualization
All
Exchange 2013 Preview server roles are supported within a virtual machine,
provided the virtual machine and hypervisor environment meet all of the system
requirements for running Exchange 2013 Preview.
Microsoft
supports Exchange 2013 Preview in production on hardware virtualization
software only when all the following conditions are true:
·
The
hardware virtualization software is running one of the following:
o Windows Server 2012
o Windows Server 2008 R2 with
Hyper-V technology
o Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2
o Any third-party hypervisor that
has been validated under the Windows
Server Virtualization Validation Program.
·
The
Exchange guest virtual machine:
o Is running Microsoft Exchange
2013 Preview.
o Is deployed on an operating
system that is supported by Exchange 2013 Preview.
·
The
storage used by an Exchange virtual machine for Exchange data (for example,
mailbox databases or Hub transport queues) can be any of the following:
o Virtual disks of a fixed size
(for example, fixed virtual hard disks (VHDs) in a Hyper-V environment).
o Virtual disks store on
block-level, direct attached storage (DAS) that is locally connected to the
hypervisor machine.
o Block-level storage that is
connected via storage area network (SAN) technology (could include fiber
channel, fiber channel over Ethernet, or Internet SCSI (iSCSI)).
o SCSI pass-through storage.
o Internet SCSI (iSCSI) storage.
All storage used by an Exchange guest machine for
storage of Exchange data must be block-level storage because Exchange 2013
Preview 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:
o Virtual disks that dynamically
expand aren't supported by Exchange.
o Virtual disks that use
differencing or delta mechanisms (such as Hyper-V's differencing VHDs or
snapshots) aren't supported.
·
Only
management software (for example, antivirus software, backup software, or
virtual machine management software) can be deployed on the physical root
machine. No other server-based applications (for example, Exchange, SQL Server,
Active Directory, or SAP) should be installed on the root machine. The root
machine must be dedicated to running guest virtual machines.
·
Some
hypervisors include features for taking snapshots of virtual machines. Virtual
machine snapshots capture the state of a virtual machine while it's running.
This feature enables you to take multiple snapshots of a virtual machine and
then revert the virtual machine to any of the previous states by applying a
snapshot to the virtual machine. However, virtual machine snapshots aren't
application aware, and using them can have unintended and unexpected
consequences for a server application that maintains state data, such as
Exchange. As a result, making virtual machine snapshots of an Exchange guest
virtual machine isn't supported.
·
Many
hardware virtualization products allow you to specify the number of virtual
processors that should be allocated to each guest virtual machine. The virtual
processors located in the guest virtual machine share a fixed number of logical
processors in the physical system. Exchange supports a virtual
processor-to-logical processor ratio no greater than 2:1. For example, a dual
processor system using quad core processors contains a total of 8 logical
processors in the host system. On a system with this configuration, don't
allocate more than a total of 16 virtual processors to all guest virtual machines
combined.
·
When
calculating the total number of virtual processors required by the root
machine, you must also account for both I/O and operating system requirements.
In most cases, the equivalent number of virtual processors required in the root
operating system for a system hosting Exchange virtual machines is 2. This
value should be used as a baseline for the root operating system virtual
processor when calculating the overall ratio of physical cores to virtual
processors. If performance monitoring of the root operating system indicates
you're consuming more processor utilization than the equivalent of 2
processors, you should reduce the count of virtual processors assigned to guest
virtual machines accordingly and verify that the overall virtual processor-to-physical
core ratio is no greater than 2:1.
·
The
operating system for an Exchange guest machine must use a disk that has a size
equal to at least 15 GB plus the size of the virtual memory that's allocated to
the guest machine. This requirement is necessary to account for the operating
system and paging file disk requirements. For example, if the guest machine is
allocated 16 GB of memory, the minimum disk space needed for the guest
operating system disk is 31 GB.
In addition, it's possible that guest virtual machines may be prevented from directly communicating with fibre channel or SCSI host bus adapters (HBAs) installed in the root machine. In this event, you must configure the adapters in the root machine's operating system and present the LUNs to guest virtual machines as either a virtual disk or a pass-through disk.
All Exchange 2013 Preview server roles may be combined with host-based failover clustering and migration technology. Exchange 2013 Preview virtual machines must be configured such that they will not save point-in-time state to disk and restore from that state when moved or taken offline. All planned or scheduled migration must take advantage of an online migration technology like Hyper-V Live Migration or VMware vMotion. Migration technology is supported by the hypervisor vendor; therefore, you must ensure that your hypervisor vendor has tested and supports migration of Exchange 2013 Preview virtual machines. Microsoft supports Hyper-V Live Migration of these virtual machines.
In addition, it's possible that guest virtual machines may be prevented from directly communicating with fibre channel or SCSI host bus adapters (HBAs) installed in the root machine. In this event, you must configure the adapters in the root machine's operating system and present the LUNs to guest virtual machines as either a virtual disk or a pass-through disk.
All Exchange 2013 Preview server roles may be combined with host-based failover clustering and migration technology. Exchange 2013 Preview virtual machines must be configured such that they will not save point-in-time state to disk and restore from that state when moved or taken offline. All planned or scheduled migration must take advantage of an online migration technology like Hyper-V Live Migration or VMware vMotion. Migration technology is supported by the hypervisor vendor; therefore, you must ensure that your hypervisor vendor has tested and supports migration of Exchange 2013 Preview virtual machines. Microsoft supports Hyper-V Live Migration of these virtual machines.
Unsupported
for production environments
The
following features and technologies are not supported for virtualized Exchange
environment:
- Oversubscription or dynamic
adjustment of memory allocated to Exchange 2013 Preview virtual machines.
- Virtual machine snapshots
which capture the state of a running virtual machine and allow reverting
to a previous state.
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