Issue
- Does EcoStruxure Building Operation support virtualization?
- Can the Enterprise and Reports server be on a virtual machine?
Product Line
EcoStruxure Building Operation
Environment
VMWare or Hyper-V with EcoStruxure Building Operation 2.0 through current release.
Cause
Desire for virtualization or cloud environment.
Resolution
Emulating environments
The term “virtualization” can mean different things to different people. For this Frequently Asked Question answer we will focus exclusively on running EcoStruxure Building Management software in emulating environments, such as VMware or Hyper-V. These emulating environment software packages imitate a physical PC environment so that many computers appear to be running on one single machine, thus “virtualization”.
There are several different software vendors who offer emulating systems. The most well-known are VMware and Hyper-V. The benefits of running an emulating environment are fewer physical machines, reduced space requirements and lower maintenance costs.
Some other potential meanings of “virtualization” are remote desktop, remote control software, terminal server environment, cluster environment, etc. These topics are not covered in this answer.
EcoStruxure Building Management in emulating environments
There are a number of installations running EcoStruxure Building Management on VMware and Hyper-V today. For the most part they have run without issue. There have been issues related to Veeam setup which does not seem to be handled well by the ES (and probably the EC). VMware is used to some extent internally in R&D and in the Product Support teams. The general impression is that the VMware emulation package works well. The user must be familiar with the emulating product in order to be able to do the correct settings, e.g. so that network works as it should.
That being said, no specific efforts have been made in the development of EcoStruxure Building Management software in order to make it compliant with emulating environments. There are also no specific tests that verify EcoStruxure Building Management functionality in emulating environments.
We have seen issues with the License system used by EcoStruxure Building Operation when it is running on certain emulating environments as the license system itself only support certain environments.
Support for EcoStruxure Building Management installations running in emulating environments
Product Support fully supports the EcoStruxure Building Management software, no matter if it runs on PC hardware or in an emulating environment, i.e. support is given for problems related to the EcoStruxure Building Management Software itself, but not for problems related to the environment it runs on.
With the exception of things such as approved operating systems, and minimum memory requirements Product Support does not provide support on how a specific PC hardware should be configured, and similarly there is no support on how to configure the emulating environment, or what emulating environments to use.
Training in emulating environments
There are several sources for training, including external vendors and colleagues in other offices or countries. Since this type of technology seems to be growing, it is recommended that each branch or partner train people to set up and use emulating environments.
Another way to learn more is to post questions or check the existing posts at the Exchange Online forums.
Please contact your domestic Product Support team for further assistance or with questions regarding this publication. Also visit the Knowledge Base – a self-service web portal that provides access “24/7” to the most frequently asked questions and solutions.