Considerations for deploying Presentation Server on a virtual machine

The TrueSight Presentation Server can be installed and run on a virtual machine (VM).

When deploying the product on VMs, be aware that additional overhead exists because resources are shared across VMs. The same performance that is possible running applications on a physical computer is not possible on VMs. However, VMs offer more flexibility and ease of administration for some aspects, such as high availability and backups. 

Considerations for virtual machines:

• If the VM resources are available and not over-allocated, you do not need to reserve the CPU and memory. When troubleshooting performance issues, BMC may ask you to temporarily reserve the resources to help isolate the issue.

• ESX overprovision:

  • Memory overcommitment - Allocating more memory to the VMs than the physical host. When the combined working memory footprint of all the VMs exceeds that of host memory size, it indicates Memory overcommitment. Avoid Memory overcommitment.
  • CPU overcommitment - Running more vCPUs on the host compared to the total number of physical processor cores on a specific host. Avoid CPU overcommitment.
• Memory ballooning - When the demand of the VM is high for the host to handle and the host is running out of the physical memory, Memory ballooning occurs. If the Memory ballooning occurs continuously for a longer time, it might effect negatively the overall VM performance and  TrueSight Operations Management application.
• Datastore -  Monitor the datastore section of the VM where the application is installed. There should be enough free space on the VM.

• Configure Jumbo frames for the storage adapter.

• Periodically monitor the CPU usage of the host.