Windows VM Hosting
The platform enables service providers to offer traditional virtual machines with Windows workloads in the same topology side by side with Linux containers. This approach provides high density, improves hardware utilization and reduces management complexity by eliminating the need to use any additional VM orchestration platform on a separate infrastructure.
1. In order to enable VM-based Windows hosting, you need to Build Windows VM Template (e.g., Windows Server 2019 or 2022) and add it to the required hosts (i.e. ones that will provide Windows VM support).
Once a Windows VM appears at the JCA > Templates section, you need to make it available in the end-users' topology wizard through publishing.
2. If needed, you can configure distribution rules for your Windows VM template to ensure that it is installed only on the host(s) that are licensed appropriately:
- add a label to the hosts with Windows support (e.g. windows)
- configure distribution settings for the Windows template (e.g. as it is shown in the image below)
3. You need to define Windows VM pricing plans that will be offered within your PaaS installation.
VMs operate with a fixed set of resources, so prepare required resource plans. Each one defines the amount of reserved RAM, an integer number of vCPU cores, and price per hour. Report prepared plans to the project manager assigned to your platform to accommodate required tariffs. Check an example of the configured tariff plans in the image below.
After provided configurations are applied, you can review plans in the JCA > Billing > Pricing Models > Tariff Grids. If needed, you can adjust tariffs included in the grid using the appropriate Tariffs section.Create a tariff for the Reserved Disk Space that applies to the Windows VM template only.
Add this tariff to your pricing model. As a result, Windows VMs disk will be charged differently from the regular nodes.Traffic is charged in the same way as for the regular containers, so no additional configurations are required for VMs.
4. Please, contact your TAM and inform about preparation being done (license obtained, hosts prepared, distribution configured, pricing info provided) so that the PaaS team could perform required adjustments (scripts, JPS packages) to enable new template creation from the end-user dashboard.
5. You can manage the availability of the VMs feature for end-users by adjusting the appropriate vm.nodes.enabled quota.
Refer to the User Experience guide for information on how to manage VMs via the user’s dashboard.
