Definitions

This implementation guide assumes that you and your organization have done the necessary research and analysis and have made the decision to implement MES in a virtualized environment that will replace the need for physical computers and instead run them in a virtualized environment. Such an environment can take advantage of advanced virtualization features, including High Availability. In that context, we’ll define the terms as follows:

• Virtualization in MES terms can be defined as creating a virtual, rather than real, server for one of the MES servers, including the Middleware server and the Application Object server, as well as the network resources to support the server.

• High Availability in MES can be defined as the way to make any of the MES servers available without interruption during production operations. In this virtualization testing, we chose the most critical server—the MES Middleware server.

While these definitions are general and allow for a variety of High Availability designs, this implementation guide focuses on virtualization as an indispensable element in creating the redundancy necessary for highly available MES solutions.

The virtualized environment described in this guide is based on Microsoft Hyper-V technology incorporated in the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system, and on VMware’s virtualization platform vSphere 5.0.

MES is tested on newer versions of vSphere as updates are released by VMware. Microsoft Hyper‑V is not routinely tested. As the virtualization technology is invisible to the MES software, there is no specific version support statement for VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper‑V. The timing tests as described in this document have not been re-run on newer versions of either virtualization platform.