Another question about Virtualization...

[BBliss_spc]

I realize Adobe has removed the language saying that running FMS on a virtual platform is unsupported, but I have not found any indication that it is supported, either.  Also, I hear anecdotal comments about this being a non-recommended configuration, but I have yet to find anybody who has tested it in a production environment.

So, my question: Can anybody point me to a production site running either 3.5 or 4.x on a VM system?

Any info would be very much appreciated!

Bill Bliss

[Petro_O__Bochan]

Try this - http://www.affluxis.com/

[BBliss_spc]

Thanks for the link. 

From the looks of it (reading their service agreement), they set up the servers, and then allow customers to share the resources.  I didn't see anything on their site about these systems being run on a VM platform.  Even if that is the case, our systems often have a significantly higher load than what their service highest offering would provide.

Just to restate -- I'm wanting to know about the viability of running a high-volume FMS system as a VMWare system, and specifically would like to contact anybody who has had direct experience with such.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond!

Bill

[Petro_O__Bochan]

Hi, I bet they are running a VM since dedicated hosting would cost much more. I aasume it's Hyper-V also.

[BBliss_spc]

Thanks Petro -- Is that really an assumption, or do you have direct knowledge of their setup?  I've sent them a message asking if they are using a VM platform, but have not gotten a reply.

[Petro_O__Bochan]

A reply was just sent to you. Let us know if you need any further assistance.

[BBliss_spc]

Since you knew that, and since I got the message right after I sent the last note to you, I assume you must work for affluxis. Had you mentioned that rather than saying "I bet they are..." it would have been helpful.

As I noted earlier, (though perhaps not clearly enough), "I'm wanting to know about the viability of running a high-volume FMS system as a VMWare system, "

Again, I do appreciate the info.

[seblbuk]

We run all but prod on VMs and have no issues. Also the Amazon offering my ALL be on VMs so there must be some support contract in place for FMS and VMs....?

[BBliss_spc]

Thanks!  Interesting that you say "all but prod" -- which still seems to be the common practice.

[Guest]

It's been quite some time since I've done any large scale deployments with FMS (I've been using a different product as of late), but in the past, every FMS deployment I've done in a virtualized environment has had random problems. Streams would break without notable error, and audio/video sync problems were frequent.

I've read past comments from a couple of Adobe's scientists explaining that these sorts of problems tend to be the result of clock jitter in a vitrualized environment. Makes sense, since a/v timestamps are measured in milliseconds in FMS, and some encoder/decoder implementations will use a time base in nanoseconds.

I don't know if these sorts of problems have been addressed (or could be addressed) in a more recent version of FMS, but as of 3.5, I was avoiding VM's

[BBliss_spc]

JayCharles -- Yeah, I've seen all that info too, but it's years old. 

My server admins are trying to virtualize as much as they possibly can.  Their VM sales "dude" has assured them that all those clock jitter problems are a thing of the past --  yet he doesn't have a customer I can reference, and I can't seem to find anybody using FMS in a VM environment outside a test / development setup.

Thanks for the response.