Although Sage has no written documentation endorsing the use of virtual machines, virtual machines in general can work with Sage products. However, Sage doesn’t troubleshoot VM issues.

Virtual machine vendors (VMware, Microsoft etc.) advertise and promote their VM products (VMware or Hyper-V) as compatible with Microsoft Windows and Windows applications. Sage makes no guarantees of compatibility issues. All compatibility issues are solely between VM vendors and customers.

The License Manager (for Sage Estimating) uses USB protection devices. When using protection devices with VMs, the physical server (VM host server) hosting your VM operating systems needs a VM software with USB pass-through capability. Your VM software vendor (for example, VMware or Microsoft) can confirm if your VM software can do this.

Sometimes, the VM software doesn’t have USB pass-through capability or you can’t get the virtualized LM to recognize the device. When that occurs, install LM to a dedicated physical computer or to the VM host server itself.

Some customers have had success using USB over IP devices and software such as AnywhereUSB. When using such devices, we recommend you delay the start of services dependent on the USB protection device. For Sage Estimating, the Sentinel RMS License Manager service. Sage support can't troubleshoot these devices.

VMs will run slower than a physical server due to VMs running within another operating system layer of the physical host computer. This occurs even if you dedicate resources to a VM (for example, 16 processor cores and 32 GB RAM). If usage over-taxes the physical host computer, the VM can run slowly even if performance symptoms don't show in Task Manager or Resource Monitor. If you're logged into the VM, you won’t notice high CPU or disk usage, yet there will be performance slowness.