Running HOME inside a Virtual Machine
Guidelines and Requirements
Running HOME in a virtual machine deviates from the product specifications and requires a comprehensive understanding of the associated responsibilities. Lawo accepts no liability for problems related to or caused by the hypervisor.
Operating HOME inside a virtual machine is only supported from version 4.0 onwards. Earlier versions do not support this deployment model and must not be operated in a virtualized environment.
The HOME management platform is based on modern Docker containers and is already virtualized by design. Running HOME inside a virtual machine introduces an additional layer of virtualization (not unsimilar to nested virtualizations), which significantly increases system abstraction and increases critical performance overhead. This can not only complicate troubleshooting, error analysis, and root cause identification, but also affects overall performance negatively.
Lawo strongly recommends to run HOME on the specified physical Host Servers for proper operation and product support.
1. Virtual Machine System Requirements
The virtual machine (VM) running HOME must fully comply with the official hardware specifications provided by Lawo for HOME. (see here)
The resources allocated to the VM (CPU, RAM, storage, network) must be dedicated exclusively to HOME. Sharing these resources with other applications or services is not permitted. Over-provisioning or resource contention may lead to instability or malfunction and must be avoided.
- It is strongly recommended to run the virtual environment in a high-performance optimized setting.
2. Responsibilities When Operating HOME in a VM
The operator of the virtual platform is solely responsible for the operation, maintenance, and stability of the virtual environment.
Lawo assumes no responsibility or liability for the underlying virtual infrastructure or for any issues caused by it.
- In case of errors while running HOME, the operator is required to perform a preliminary analysis to clearly demonstrate that the issue is caused by HOME itself and not by the virtual environment or host system.
- Nested virtualization can introduce additional attack surfaces and potential for information leakage between hypervisors. Managing security risks introduced via the virtual environment is solely in the responsibility of the operator of the platform.
3. Support Conditions and Cost Allocation
- In the event of a service call, the operator of HOME is obliged to inform Lawo Support of the operation of HOME on a virtual platform.
Lawo reserves the right to decline or charge for support requests that are related to faulty or non-compliant virtual environments.
Any additional effort required for troubleshooting issues originating from the virtual platform will be charged to the HOME operator.
