Virtualization

Will Eclipse run in a virtual environment?

Yes. The Eclipse database, application and companion servers can all be operated as virtual machines.

Are any existing customers running Eclipse in a virtual environment?

Yes. We have customers of all sizes running virtual Eclipse servers, and we use virtualization technology ourselves for our internal and hosting infrastructures.

Which hypervisor does Eclipse recommend?

Any virtualization hypervisor that supports the required guest operating systems (i.e. Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux) will work. We have customers using VMware vSphere, Citrix Xen, Microsoft Hyper-V and Sun VirtualBox.

Eclipse recommends VMware vSphere based on our extensive experience and success with Eclipse deployments on this particular hypervisor.

What are the best practices for deploying Eclipse in a virtual environment?

Virtualization introduces a number of unique architectural challenges that must be considered before proceeding with a virtual deployment of Eclipse. We recommend that you follow these best practices:
  • Performance: Make sure that the hardware is sized appropriately for the Eclipse workload, and take into account any hypervisor overhead. Be careful not to over-provision hardware or over-consolidate servers. Eclipse makes no guarantees with respect to performance or scalability in a virtualized environment, but if you follow the same recommended system requirements for each virtual machine, you should not have any problems with performance.
  • Backups: Network backups are recommended for virtual environment. Tape and USB (RDX) backups are possible with using passthrough devices on certain hypervisors, but this can limit backup performance, limit the use of advanced functionality (i.e. VMotion), and is often not supported by the virtualization software vendor.
  • Fax Modems: Fax on Demand is recommend for virtual servers. Digi PortServers can also be used for accessing serial modems via TCP/IP. Serial and USB modems can be used as passthrough devices with certain hypervisors, but this can limit the use of advanced functionality (i.e. VMotion).

Support Policy

If Eclipse technical support suspects any problems are the result of the virtual environment, we may require that the problem be recreated in a standalone environment or that the customer contact the appropriate virtualization software vendor directly.

Limited, billable technical support and consultation services for virtual environments are available on a case-by-case basis.