DocsDeploying Blue Prism to a virtual environment
For some smaller implementations where there is less demand for scalability or where virtualization is not feasible, Blue Prism can be deployed to a wholly physical environment and can largely make use of existing desktops – albeit in a secured environment.
Virtualization however, is commonly the recommend approach as, amongst others, it more easily provides benefits which include physical security and scalability. Many virtualization technologies also simplify the roll-out of software updates and the implementation of disaster recover capabilities.
The core Blue Prism components can be deployed to persistent virtualized Windows devices and there are two main approaches:
Use of an existing virtualization technology
Where organizations already have access to virtualization technologies such as VMWare, Citrix XenDesktop or Microsoft Azure, there may be the capability to utilize these to provide the virtual machines which will host the required Blue Prism components.
Due to the requirement for the Blue Prism runtime resource listeners to be started and available irrespective of whether there is an active (remote) user connected to the device, it is not possible to use an on-demand virtual instance (e.g. one provided by XenApp) to provide these components.
Provision a dedicated virtualization host
Virtualization can be provided by provisioning a new dedicated server (or set of servers) on which new virtual machines are configured and used to host the required Blue Prism components. These typically use technologies such as Microsoft Hyper-V or VMWare ESX although others are available.
When deploying to this type of host machine it is important to ensure that the specification of the host machine is sufficient to not only cater for the underlying operating system, but also provide the appropriate resources and performance for each of the virtual machines that will be configured.
Dedicated virtual host (example)
- 10-15 Blue Prism runtime resources
- Dual Socket Virtualization hosts:
- Quad Intel Xeon Quad Core Processors
- 32GB RAM (minimum)
- 450GB available space after applying RAID to arrayed disks
- 2 physical 1000Mbit NIC
- Operating System appropriate to technology (e.g. Hyper-V, ESX)
On-demand virtualization
Due to the requirement for the Blue Prism runtime resource listeners to be started and available irrespective of whether there is an active (remote) user connected to the device, it is not possible to use an on-demand virtualization technology, such as XenApp, to provide these components.
