change SKU

Question

Hi All

I am using exchange 2016 Hybrid environment, my VMS are hosted in Azure. we create users in onprem and migrate to online. i have 3 servers in DAG, the VM SKU i am using is D4s_v3(4vCPUs 16GB RAM), i want to resize it to D8s_v3(8vCPUS & 32GB RAM) or D16s_v3(16vCPUS & 64GB RAM) as i am seeing spikes in CPU and memory. Will changing SKU cause any issue on exchange or exchange configuration or on DB side or on licensing side issues. i am sure nothing should happen but i want to cross check with experts.

Answer 1

Hello Glenn Maxwell,

Welcome to microsoft Q&A,Thankyou for posting your query here.

There's no direct impact on your Exchange licensing by changing VM sizes, as Exchange licensing is not based on the hardware or VM size but on the number of mailboxes and the type of licenses (Standard/Enterprise) you own.

Resizing should not affect your data, but it is good practice to create recent backup of your exchange databases and server configurations.

Resizing a Virtual machine requires downtime of the server. So to overcome this period of downtime you can consider using azure scale sets which increasing the VMs based on the usage of CPU and DISK.

please refer this documentation for resizing the VM.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/sizes/resize-vm?tabs=portal

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Answer 2

@Glenn Maxwell

Changing the VM SKU should not cause any issues with Exchange or its configuration as long as the new SKU meets the minimum requirements for Exchange and the operating system it is running on.

However, you should ensure that you have the necessary licensing in place for the new SKU, as some licensing models are based on the number of cores or processors in use.

Additionally, you should ensure that your storage solution can handle the increased workload that may come with the larger VM size.

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