Microsoft Dynamics GP v10 and supported virtualization platforms

The Windows Server Catalog site may just be one of the best kept secrets on the web. According to the About This Site page, "[t]he Windows Server Catalog lists thousands of hardware and software items compatible with the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003 operating systems. In addition, products may also be compatible with other versions of Microsoft Windows as shown in each product details page."

In response to my friend Steve Endow's inquiry on Microsoft's support of vitualization environments and Dynamics GP, I went in quest of finding the answer since it is not always apparent where to find this information. The first place of course, the Systems Requirements page of CustomerSource/PartnerSource. On this page, you can clearly read the software and hardware virtualization platforms supported, but as usual the fine print is rather more interesting.



It turns out this page points to the Windows Server Catalog page where furthermore you can inquiry on other tested solutions by clicking on the Server Virtualization Validation Program site link.


The site has a Support Policy Wizard link that will take you to a wizard-based tool where you can select the products you would like to obtain support information about.



Next, in the product drop-down, you can choose any of the Microsoft products listed, in this case, Dynamics GP. Version 10 is the only release listed, but I am sure this will change in a couple years from now with the advent of new releases.


After clicking Next, the wizard presented a drop-down list with the supported virtualization technologies. Among the ones listed:

• Microsoft Hyper-V
• Cisco WAAS Virtual Blades 4.1
• Novel SUSE Linux Ent Server 10 SP2
• VMWare ESX 3.5 Update 2, 3, 4
• VMWare ESXi 3.5 Update 3, 4
• VMWare vSphere 4
• Citrix XenServer 5, 5.5

But there had to be more, right? Right! The wizard allows you to check on the guest operating system configurations and processors along with the environment to verify which configurations have been tested and are currently supported.


As indicated in the screenshot, I decided to try something not too common: I selected Cisco WAAS Virtual Blades 4.1 as the virtualization technology, Windows Server 2008 R2 as the guest OS, and x64 as the OS architecture. When I pressed Next ...



...I was pleasantly surprised to see that Cisco WAAS Virtual Blades with Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64) was a supported platform. The good news is, as long as a platform and a configuration is supported you are able to obtain technical support.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MVP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com