PPM Server in a Virtualized Environment

When deploying PPM Server in a certified virtual server environment, the following performance best practices apply:

• Set the memory (RAM) and CPU entitlement for the virtual machine as recommended in the production sizing guidelines. Provide the same memory (RAM) and CPU entitlement that you would if you were to deploy PPM on a physical host.

• Ideally, provide enough CPU and memory at the physical host layer to meet the full entitlement as exposed to the consolidated virtual machines.

PPM is an enterprise application that runs inside Java Virtual Machines (JVMs). JVM memory management performance is optimized when the Java heap setting is maintained at a constant value (-Xms = -Xmx). This prevents unnecessary full garbage collection cycles, which require that you resize the overall heap and associated memory subregions.

JVM object management ergonomics assume that all heap memory is loaded in physical memory, although this is mapped as virtual memory at the operating system level, actively utilizing the entire heap address space. Performance is optimized when the entire heap can remain in physical memory. For virtualized environments, this requires that enough physical memory is available to prevent excessive paging on the supported virtual machines.