Author: Zahir Hussain Shah
Exchange 2010 SP1 OWA over Hyper-V Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 is running slow 
Tags: Exchange 2010 SP1 installed on Hyper-V Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 high network utilization | Hyper-V Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 high network utilization, Exchange 2010 SP1 is providing slow response to user queries | Installing Exchange 2010 SP1 on Hyper-V Windows Server 2008 R2 Sp1
Application and Server Virtualization Overview (Microsoft Hyper-V) :
After the immense boom of virtualization in the Information Technology, where this technology provides great saving for its users to save their money, and to use their IT resources at utmost capacity, while virtualizing Application Infrastructure, wherever it is possible to virtualize, with this trend in our IT industry, it help a lot of small to mid-size organization, which cannot afford massive requirement to build new servers and to meet growing business needs for having new application and their integration with existing applications.
Being a Microsoft Infrastructure Solutions Consultant, I personally see a great contribution from Microsoft in the Server and Application Virtualization products with their Hyper-V, and every day, I do encourage people to go with it, because specially for Microsoft Solutions such as Exchange, ADDS, SQL, System Center products and etc… using Hyper-V works quite well, and helps you to save your server cost, and also helps you to go for Green-IT.
Well, we described enough a lot Hyper-V and virtualization, now let’s talk about the issue for which we are going to resolve here…
I saw this problem, when I built one production Exchange 2010 SP1 HA environment on Hyper-V Windows Server 2008 R2, where we saw that the OWA from both Internally and Externally working slow, and since it was a brand new environment, and everything was dedicatedly assigned to have good performance, we were trying to figure it out that why it is happening, then we found that with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 there is a hotfix needed for Hyper-V which resolves this issue.
Problem:
Exchange 2010 SP1 OWA provides slow response while Exchange 2010 SP1 runs as a VM on Hyper-V Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
Symptom:
When user tries to open OWA from LAN or WAN they complains that OWA response is not at par, and it takes time for OWA to perform any operations.
Resolution:
Install this hotfix “KB2263829” on your Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V Servers, where you have created Exchange 2010 SP1 virtual machines.
I would also recommend here that, when creating VMs for Exchange 2010, especially for Hyper-V, always use dedicated physical networks for each Exchange 2010 Role, which means that if you are going to have Mailbox and HUB/CAS on one Hyper-V node, then you should have Network configuration like this for Hyper-V:
| Physical Network(s) | Virtual Network(s) | Physical Network Connectivity, Cabling design | Description |
| Physical Network Card 1 | Exchange CAS W-NLB Interface | Connect to your core-switch, because creating a private network with connection both physical Hyper-V server using crossover cable, will required to configure static-route, so connecting to core switch and using same IP Addressing scheme, save you from static route. | CAS NLB (Private) on which you will select while creating W-NLB Cluster |
| Physical Network Card 2 | Exchange Mailbox Replication | Connect these two physical Hyper-V Server with crossover cable, and use private IP Addresses on hyper-V nodes like 172.16.0.0/24, and assign the same IP Addresses on your Exchange 2010 MBX VM for its Replication Network. | Mailbox Replication Private Network |
| Physical Network Card 3 | Exchange CAS / HUB / MBX Server Management Interface | Normal connectivity for Server with Server VLAN | Since on the management Interface you won’t be having much traffic, so you can use it for other VMs management interface also, but if you do have additional interfaces, then go for dedicated one for each role. |
How to build W-NLB Cluster for Exchange 2010 SP1 Client Access Server (Client Access Array), see my below article, which provides step-by-step guide for setting up Exchange 2010 CAS ARRAY Cluster:
Hope this article will help you to overcome this situation, and make your Hyper-V (Exchange 2010 SP1 Virtualized) environment stable.
Cheers!
Zahir Hussain Shah
Infrastructure Practice Consultant – Unified Communications
MCSE, MCTS, MCTIP Enterprise Administrator, ITIL
Blog: http://zahirshahblog.com | LinkedIn | Twitter
Azure Hybrid & Cloud Migration Blog 
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