C•CURE 9000 Virtual Machine Recommendations

Purpose:
This document contains basic recommendations on how to configure your virtual machines so
that they perform optimally running the CCURE 9000 server. It does not contain instructions for
how to set up any particular VM, please refer to other documents for that. The focus of this
document is on making sure that if you run several VMs on one host machine, they do not
interfere with each other. This document is targeted towards medium to large CCURE 9000
servers.

CCURE 9000 Server VM configurations:

There are three configurations:
• 9000 Server only: A VM which contains only the CCURE 9000 server software.
• SQL Server only: A VM which contains only the SQL Server used to hold the CCURE
9000 database:
• 9000/SQL Server: A VM which contains both the CCURE 9000 server and the SQL
Server running 9000 databases.

Basic rules for each VM running CCURE 9000 Server:

Each VM must follow at least the minimum recommendations as specified in the CCURE 9000
datasheet, V2.10. Here are some basic rules:
• It is very highly recommended that all VMs be running 64 bit operating systems
• VMs generally need at least 8GB of memory, larger models may need more:
o A 9000 Server only will typically need 4-8GB, more for V2.10
o A SQL Server only will typically need 8 to 24 GB, depending on system size
o A 9000/SQL Server will typically need 12 to 32 GB.

• VMs need at absolute minimum of 2 CPU cores each:

o A 9000 Server only will need 2 – 4 CPU cores
o A SQL Server only will need 2 – 8 CPU cores
o A 9000/SQL Server will need 4 - 10 CPU cores
• It is strongly recommended that VMs have a 15,000 RPM disk for large system.

Rules for running several VMs on the same host machine:

The following rules apply as long as at least two VMs are running on a host machine. It doesn’t
matter if there is only one VM running a CCURE 9000 server, and the other VMs are running
other software, or if several VMs are running CCURE 9000 servers on the same host. These
rules help to prevent interference between VMs:

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• Each VM needs an appropriate amount of dedicated memory; see the rules above. This
memory must be dedicated to this VM only, it cannot be shared with other VMs
dynamically.
• Each VM has dedicated CPU cores; see the rules above. Just as with memory, these
CPU cores should not be shared with other VMs. This means that if you add together all
the CPUs used on all the VMs, it should not exceed the total number of physical cores
for the host PC. It is possible to relax this rule, but proving that you have allocated
enough CPU resources to the 9000/SQL Servers is not easy. The 9000 servers tend
most of the time to make moderate demands of CPU, but there are periods where the
demand is much higher, and performance will suffer badly during those periods if
enough CPU resources are not available. Times when the 9000 server uses a lot of
CPU include after a system startup, and when downloading iSTAR/apc/ISC panels.
• Each VM which contains a SQL Server used for 9000 databases needs to have a
dedicated disk to read/write databases. (This is either a SQL Server only or a 9000/SQL
Server configuration). This may be the most important requirement of all. There are
many cases where the 9000 Server makes quite heavy demands on the disk of the SQL
Server machine. It is easy to overlook this when measuring system performance; it can
have a dramatic effect on the responsiveness of the 9000 server.
o This is especially important if the host PC is running more than one 9000 Server
on it. When the 9000 servers start up, they use the disk very heavily, and having
all of them accessing the same disk at once will badly hurt system performance.
There are other times, such as controller downloading and synchronization (for
an enterprise system) which also put heavy demands on the SQL Server disk.
o This requirement can only be relaxed if there is some kind of SAN solution which
automatically balances disk usage and insures that each VM gets enough disk
resources. If a SAN is used, monitoring may still need to be done to make sure
that the 9000 SQL Server VM(s) are getting the disk resources they need.

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