VM Requirements
Because the configuration of a VM can be complex, DATPROF distributes a pre-existing VM which you can use as a starting template, with all the necessary settings already configured.
Should you want to configure your own, follow these specifications:
A virtual machine which can be connected to externally, running a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu. On it, the following must at the very least be configured:
Docker, with SSL configured
OpenSSH, for configuring the connection to the VM from a client
BTRFS – a BTRFS file-system must be available.
“Hardware” Requirements
Because the Virtualize VM will be used as a container host that hosts a range of containers containing databases, the exact specifications required of the machine are highly dependent on the expected load on the machine.
On top of the above, the database types being used have a profound effect on how requirements scale. The more efficient a database image is made, and the more light-weight the image is, the more efficiently usage can scale when increasing the number of environments and clones.
A good rule of thumb is sizing the VM modestly for an initial deployment, using your existing on-premise or cloud based database server(s) as a basis for estimating CPU, RAM and storage requirements. If required, these parameters can be modified later as required. In order to limit the requirements associated with the VM, tools such as DATPROF Subset can also be used in order to limit the size of test data sets stored on the VM.
Common hosting solutions
The Virtualize VM can be hosted on a wide range of VM hosting tools, and the setup process is largely the same, independent of which tool is chosen. In this documentation we’ve detailed two of the more common ways of hosting the VM:
Oracle VirtualBox, for simple and/or locally hosted workloads,
VMWare vSphere, for more enterprise-minded implementations.
Aside from any self-hosted VM solutions, the Virtualize VM image is also available at cloud providers such as AWS and Azure, either from the AWS AMI Catalogue or the Azure Marketplace.
Support disclaimer
Virtualize relies on a lot of underlying technologies (Virtual Machines, Docker, btrfs). Because of this, the usage of this tool can quickly become very complex, with multiple containers and interfaces producing logging. The user is explicitly responsible for maintaining both the virtual machine and the underlying Docker containers/images, and our standard support does not cover this topic.