Installing Enterprise Server on Hyper-V

To install Enterprise Server on Hyper-V, you must deploy onto a machine running Windows Server 2008 through Windows Server 2022.

In this article

Prerequisites

Hardware considerations

We recommend different hardware configurations depending on the number of user licenses for your Enterprise Server instance. If you provision more resources than the minimum recommended requirements, your instance will perform and scale better.

User licensesx86-64 vCPUsMemoryRoot storageAttached (data) storageIOPS
Trial, demo, or 10 light users432 GB400 GB500 GB600
Up to 1,000848 GB400 GB500 GB3000
1,000 to 3,0001664 GB400 GB1000 GB6000
3,000 to 5,00032128 GB400 GB1500 GB9000
5,000 to 8,00048256 GB400 GB3000 GB12000
8,000 to 10,000+64512 GB400 GB5000 GB15000

If you plan to enable Actions or Advanced Security for the users of your instance, more resources are required.

  • Actions - increase both CPU and memory by at least 25%
  • Advanced Security - increase both CPU and memory by at least 25%

These adjustments should be applied to the base requirements for each user tier. We recommend monitoring all changes to your resources, as further increases may be needed.

For more information about these requirements, see Getting started with Actions for Enterprise Server.

If you plan to enable Container registry for the users of your instance, more resources are required. For more information about these requirements, see Getting started with Packages for your enterprise.

For more information about adjusting resources for an existing instance, see Increasing storage capacity and Increasing CPU or memory resources.

Storage

We recommend a high-performance SSD with high input/output operations per second (IOPS) and low latency for Enterprise Server. Workloads are I/O intensive. If you use a bare metal hypervisor, we recommend directly attaching the disk or using a disk from a storage area network (SAN).

Your instance requires a persistent data disk separate from the root disk. For more information, see System overview.

Warning

Root storage refers to the total size of your instance's root disk. When the instance is booted you will see 200GB available on the root filesystem. The remaining 200GB is reserved for upgrades. For more information, see System overview.

To configure Actions, you must provide external blob storage. For more information, see Getting started with Actions for Enterprise Server.

The available space on the root filesystem will be 50% of the total disk size. You can resize your instance's root disk by building a new instance or using an existing instance. For more information, see System overview and Increasing storage capacity.

CPU and memory

The CPU and memory resources that Enterprise Server requires depend on the levels of activity for users, automations, and integrations.

Any VMs you provision for your Enterprise Server instance must use the x86-64 CPU architecture. Other architectures are not supported, such as AArch64 or arm64.

If you plan to enable Actions for the users of your Enterprise Server instance, you may need to provision additional CPU and memory resources for your instance. For more information, see Getting started with Actions for Enterprise Server.

When you increase CPU resources, recommends adding at least 6.5 GB of memory for each vCPU (up to 16 vCPUs) that you provision for the instance. When you use more than 16 vCPUs, you don't need to add 6.5 GB of memory for each vCPU, but you should monitor your instance to ensure it has enough memory.

Warning

We recommend that users configure webhook events to notify external systems of activity on Enterprise Server. Automated checks for changes, or polling, will negatively impact the performance and scalability of your instance. For more information, see About webhooks.

For more information about monitoring the capacity and performance of Enterprise Server, see Monitoring your instance.

You can increase your instance's CPU or memory resources. For more information, see Increasing CPU or memory resources.

Should I use VMotion?

VMotion can be exceptionally helpful for general resource management, however the impact to the guest instance can be significant. With larger Enterprise Server instances (8 CPU/64 GB RAM and above), a VMotion event may result in a full outage of the Enterprise Server to end users as a result of dramatically reduced CPU, RAM, and storage IOPS. With this in mind, Enterprise Server should be considered a "highly latency sensitive" application.

For large(r) deployments on VMWare that have Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) enabled, we would recommend configuring a VM-to-Host affinity rule for your Enterprise Server to try and keep the virtual appliance on a single host. If a migration with VMotion is required, we'd recommend considering this a "planned outage", and placing Enterprise Server into maintenance mode until the migration is complete.

We also recommend that the ESXi Power Management Setting be configured to "High Performance". We have seen cases where overall system performance can be negatively impacted if this is left at "Balanced".

Downloading the Enterprise Server image

  1. Download your license. For more information, see Downloading your license for Enterprise.

  2. Navigate to the image you want to use for your new instance.

    • Navigate to Release notes.
    • In the right sidebar, click the version you want to download.
    • Click Download Enterprise Server X.X.X.

  3. Under " On-premises", select the "Select your hypervisor" dropdown menu and click Hyper-V (VHD).

  4. Click Download for Hyper-V (VHD).

Creating the Enterprise Server instance

To create the instance, you'll need to import the Enterprise Server image to your virtual machine and attach an additional storage volume for your instance data. For more information, see Hardware considerations.

  1. In PowerShell, create a new Generation 1 virtual machine, configure the size based on your user license count, and attach the Enterprise Server image you downloaded. For more information, see New-VM in the Microsoft documentation.

    PS C:\> New-VM -Generation 1 -Name VM_NAME -MemoryStartupBytes MEMORY_SIZE -BootDevice VHD -VHDPath PATH_TO_VHD

  2. Create a new virtual disk to use as an attached storage volume for your instance data, and configure the size based on your user license count. If reusing an existing disk, ensure that the disk is empty and there are no partitions. Replace PATH_TO_DATA_DISK with the path to the location where you create the disk. For more information, see New-VHD in the Microsoft documentation.

    PS C:\> New-VHD -Path PATH_TO_DATA_DISK -SizeBytes DISK_SIZE

  3. Attach the data disk to your instance. For more information, see Add-VMHardDiskDrive in the Microsoft documentation.

    PS C:\> Add-VMHardDiskDrive -VMName VM_NAME -Path PATH_TO_DATA_DISK

  4. Start the VM. For more information, see Start-VM in the Microsoft documentation.

    PS C:\> Start-VM -Name VM_NAME

  5. Get the IP address of your VM. For more information, see Get-VMNetworkAdapter in the Microsoft documentation.

    PS C:\> (Get-VMNetworkAdapter -VMName VM_NAME).IpAddresses

  6. Copy the VM's IP address and paste it into a web browser.

Configuring the Enterprise Server instance

To configure the instance, you must upload a license file, set the root Management Console password, configure the instance's settings, and restart the instance.

Warning

To prevent an attacker from compromising the new instance, ensure that you personally set the root Management Console password and create the first user as soon as possible.

  1. Copy the virtual machine's public DNS name, and paste it into a web browser.
  2. At the prompt, upload your license file and set a management console password. For more information, see Managing your license for Enterprise.
  3. In the Management Console, configure and save your desired settings. For more information, see Configuring Enterprise.
  4. The instance will restart automatically.
  5. Click Visit your instance.

Further reading