Caché and Virtualization

InterSystems Products and Virtualization Software
September 17, 2008

It is InterSystems policy and procedure to verify and release InterSystems’ products against operating systems (e.g. Microsoft Windows, RedHat Linux, etc.) and processor types, and not computers (server, workstation, etc.) of various vendors. As such virtualization software (e.g. VMWare, Parallels, etc.) is considered a computer.

InterSystems’ products released for an operating system are supported if the operating system is used within such a computer.

InterSystems has determined in benchmark and customer testing that virtualization environments running Caché, Ensemble, DeepSee or HealthShare might require significantly greater CPU capacity than native installations on the same hardware. In multi-user tests, CPU load is often twice as great (200%) as the same tests run on the same operating system natively on the same hardware. Furthermore, there are often application specific implications for response time for interactive jobs.

This affects all versions of all InterSystems’ products. Our findings indicate that the computer requirements are greater if our products are run inside virtualization software. InterSystems recommends that any customers contemplating a deployment into such a platform conduct application specific testing to ascertain what, if any, response time impact will be noticed by users.