Can the PHS7 server be installed on a virtual machine?
The PHS7 server will operate under all major virtualization environments such as VMWare and HyperV.
Ensure that the VM meets the minimum hardware requirements.
It is recommended that a separate drive is available for the database and backups so if resizing is required then the data drive can be resized and the boot drive is left unchanged.
Part of the product installation is product activation, and this requires that some parts of the hardware do not change. The most notable being that the size and geometry of the boot drive (C:) must not change. Changes such as the boot drive geometry and the underlying CPU will deactivate PHS7.
Hardware stability is important to avoid product deactivation.
Virtualized environments that use load balancing or fail-over are problematic for our product activation and we discourage the installation of our products in virtualized environments that implement load balancing or fail-over.
In these environments, PHS7 may deactivate when the underlying hardware changes.
Load balanced servers and fail-over servers are not supported.
It is important to ensure that no antivirus software access the database files or the database backup files. The database and database backups can become large and scanning these files can result in significant performance loss.
Scanning programs that use a hash, such as Carbon Black, are particularly troublesome as they read the whole database when you log in. This causes appalling performance. Exclude the database and database backup folders from Carbon Black scanning as you would with any other antivirus software.
Do not allow antivirus to scan the database or database backups.
We have no known issues with any block level backup program such as ShadowProtect, however be aware that such programs do not integrate with the database engine in any manner so a volume level backup produced while the database is in use is a not a read-consistent snapshot of the database and is of limited value if it needs to be restored.
Always run the PHS7 backup program (Which can be run while users are operating) on a schedule and ensure that the backup files it produces are then backed-up onto secure storage.