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Summary:

Can I run the BES Server and/or BES Relays on virtual machines?

Solution:

VMWare or other virtual server tools are fully supported for all BES components. Today there are many BES customers running virtual servers for the BES Server, BES Relays, BES Consoles, and BES Clients. However, there are some concerns about using virtualized computers:

• Virtual servers introduce an IO penalty for the additional virtualization overhead. Since BES Server performance is heavily dependent on disk performance, using a virtual server can hinder performance. We recommend upgrading your disk array for more performance (high-speed RAID controller with many high-performing disks) to compensate for the IO penalty.



• It is highly recommended to use only one virtual server instance with the BES Server on the underlying hardware. If you are running multiple virtual servers on the same hardware, expect that the other virtual servers will affect the BES Server performance and vice-versa.



• If there is an issue with the BES Server and during troubleshooting we determine that the issue is caused by a problem with the underlying virtualization of the system, we will recommend that you either go to the virtual server vendor for a fix or switch to a physical instance of the server (this is not an expected scenario, but small bugs/issues in the virtual server will sometimes cause severe problems with BES due to the performance characteristics).