Lotus Domino Server running on VMWare

HCL Domino Domino Forum
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I just need to know the general opinion from all Domino Admins in regards to running a Domino server on VMWare - is it advisable at all? Will it have more benefits in general?

Reason I asked, we’ve had a few crashes since we started running one of our Domino server on VMWare.

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Subject: Domino in VMware

I have three Domino servers running in VMware and they all run flawlessly. IBM has a technote regarding the proper setup of a Domino virtual server: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=203&uid=swg21267837

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Subject: No problems here

We run several servers on vmware. we do not run in problems regarding vmware.

Regards,

Peter

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Subject: The good outweighs the bad

I haven’t had any reliability issues, but I have noticed that if the server has been a idle, there’s a bit of delay for it to ‘wake up’ and respond to a web request. Once it’s serving traffic again, it’s fine.

Note that this was pre 8.5.1, and only web traffic, I haven’t noticed any delay when accessing via Notes client. I haven’t noticed the delay in 8.5.1, but haven’t actively tested either. I believe I saw this as a known issue either on the VMWare forum, or here somewhere.

5

Subject: More…

Oh, as far as crashing. We have 3 on VM that are relatively bulletproof. The fourth crashes almost every other night. It’s a dev. server though, and it complains about not enough memory allocated, CPU resources, blah blah blah.

In short, give the VM more resources and see if it helps your issues.

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Subject: No problems here, either

We have 17 Domino servers, all of which are virtualized using VMWare. No problems at all.

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Subject: We migrated over a dozen to VMWare six months ago…

  • I’m not an admin, but I use two of the servers that were migrated. One was a real nightmare, but that’s because the admins put six VMs on a dual-core machine, and this server is heavily loaded. We wound up putting it on its own quad-code hardware and it’s all better now.

  • But that’s not VMWare’s fault, far as I’m concerned. Even I (who am not an admin) would never put six machines on dual-core hardware, one of which is heavily utilized. That’s just poor execution.

  • The other server works gangbusters, and is actually more responsive than it was on real hardware.

  • As I don’t use the other ten or so I can’t address how they are working, but I haven’t heard the admins mention they’re spending a lot of time firefighting VM issues.

Hope this helps