T31-2025 - Support for BIOVIA Applications on Virtual Servers and Public Cloud Services

Operating System

All supported operating systems

Description

BIOVIA understands that customers may wish to deploy BIOVIA applications on virtual servers using “hypervisors” such as VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Oracle Solaris Virtualization, or Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers. We are also aware of increasing deployment of BIOVIA solutions on public cloud offerings such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. This bulletin outlines the extent to which BIOVIA will assist customers using BIOVIA applications in these virtualized servers and/or hosting environments. 

Note:  Unless otherwise stated in the “System Requirements” document for a specific product, BIOVIA does not formally support specific server virtualization or technology or hosting providers.  For specific BIOVIA applications, support for specific server virtualization and hosting technologies may be stated in the “System Requirements” documents and in those cases that information supersedes the information in this bulletin. 

Note:  Materials Studio and Discovery Studio clients are not supported on virtualized environments. 

Note:  Some High-Performance Computing (HPC) scenarios such as Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and Parallel computational jobs for molecular modeling require dedicated physical hardware. 

If you decide to deploy your BIOVIA applications on a virtual server:

• The virtualization hypervisor must be fully supported by its vendor.
• The virtual server must meet or exceed the specifications stated in the “System Requirements” document for the specific BIOVIA product(s) being used.
• The underlying physical hardware must have sufficient resources (i.e. CPU, RAM, etc…) to manage the virtual server as well as any other processes such as the virtualization hypervisor that are also running on it.
  • Note:  Required resources may exceed those suggested in the BIOVIA “System Requirements” document for larger deployments or for scenarios where large amounts of data are being managed by the BIOVIA application.  Industry standard best practices should be followed to adequately “size” your physical hardware and virtual servers based on the actual load on the overall system.
• For a scenario where multiple virtual servers are managed through the same virtualization hypervisor, physical server resources must be statically allocated to the virtual server(s) hosting the BIOVIA application and any associated database instances.  This should include:
  • Dedicate physical Cores to the virtual server.
  • Dedicate physical memory to that virtual server. Dedicate a separate network adapter for that virtual server. o Dedicate a separate disk volume or RAID array for that virtual server.
  • Dedicate a separate network adapter for network attached storage (e.g. ISCSI) or use a high performance I/O connection (e.g. Fiber Channel). 

When these criteria are met BIOVIA Support will, in good faith, investigate reported cases where the installation and use of an BIOVIA application in a virtual server environment limits or disrupts the application’s normal, documented, operation. The following caveats apply to how those cases will be handled:

• We will use our standard troubleshooting processes to investigate the reported issue with the BIOVIA product(s). These troubleshooting processes do not include looking at the virtualization hypervisor’s configuration or reproducing on a public cloud environment.
• If we are unable to resolve the problem via these standard troubleshooting steps, we will work with the Customer to try and build a reproducible case on a fully supported BIOVIA configuration, outside of the virtualized/hosted environment. The onus here is on the Customer to provide an environment or details that are sufficient for BIOVIA to rapidly reproduce or characterize the issue in the BIOVIA product in a standard physical environment. BIOVIA’s involvement does not include sending Technical Support engineers on-site to the customer’s facilities and efforts may be limited due to other business priorities.
• Where application performance is sub-standard and BIOVIA is not able to resolve the performance issue via our standard troubleshooting processes, BIOVIA will direct the Customer to the vendor of the hypervisor / hosting provider for further support.
• If the issue can be reproduced on a supported configuration outside of the virtualized /hosted environment, we will work to resolve the issue with the BIOVIA product, via a workaround or software change. Per our standard support conditions, depending on the severity of the issue, any required software change(s) may be delivered in the next general release of the affected product or via a special release (for example a “Hotfix”).
• If the issue cannot be reproduced on a supported BIOVIA configuration, outside of the virtualized/hosted environment, BIOVIA will stop work on the case and direct the customer to work directly with the vendor of your virtualization software to resolve the problem.  BIOVIA will assist that vendor as needed if they have questions about the operation of the BIOVIA application.
• BIOVIA does not offer any direct technical support for the installation, configuration, or ongoing use of any virtualization products.  Virtualization product-specific issues must be directly reported to the vendor of your virtualization software.

How to contact BIOVIA Support

If you have any questions, please contact BIOVIA Support.