You may experience a decrease in performance when you run Project Server in a hardware virtualization software environment

When you run Microsoft Office Project Server in a hardware virtualization software environment, you may experience a decrease in performance. This decrease may occur when you perform any one of the following actions:

• You open a project in Project Server by using Microsoft Office Project Professional.
• You save a project to Project Server by using Project Professional.
• You publish project information to Project Server by using Project Professional.
• You build an online analytical processing (OLAP) cube by using Microsoft Office Project Web Access.
• You view data that is stored in an OLAP cube by using a Portfolio Analyzer view in Project Web Access.
• You display a view in Project Web Access.

The performance issues that you experience may differ depending on several factors such as your hardware environment, your performance requirements, and load levels.

To avoid performance issues, we recommend that you use physical hardware when you implement a Project Server enterprise project management (EPM) solution in a production environment. We recommend that you use a hardware virtualization software environment only for proof-of-concept or test implementations.

You can use hardware virtualization software to run multiple operating system instances at the same time on a single computer. Microsoft has two software products that provide this functionality, Microsoft Virtual PC and Microsoft Virtual Server. Third-party software manufacturers also have software that provides this functionality.

Consider the following information when you use Microsoft Virtual Server 2005.

Virtual machine considerations

• Each virtual machine can have only one CPU. The server must be sized in such a way that a single CPU can handle the estimated load on the server. The number of virtual machines that are running at the same time on the host computer will affect the overall performance of the system.

Host computer considerations

• Make sure that the server that is running Virtual Server 2005 is sized correctly to handle the number of virtual machines that you plan to deploy. When you estimate the size, include the CPU, memory, network adapters, and disk configuration.
• If an antivirus program is installed on the host computer, configure the antivirus program not to scan .vhd files.

For more information about configuration planning for Project Server 2003, see the Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Configuration Planning Guide. To obtain this guide, visit the following Microsoft Web site: Not all Microsoft Windows Server products are appropriate candidates to run in a Microsoft Virtual Server environment. You must consider factors such as your hardware environment, your performance requirements, and load levels.

To help determine whether Microsoft Virtual Server is an appropriate solution for your environment, see the Solution Accelerator for Consolidating and Migrating LOB Applications document. This document provides guidance for consolidating and migrating Line of Business (LOB) applications to a Virtual Server 2005-based solution. It includes detailed technical information, recommendations, processes, test scripts, and a test guide.

For more information about the support policy for Microsoft software that is running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: