I have a client asking me if FIM is supported under VMWare. Where can I find official guidance on this, specficially which roles (Portal, Service, Database, Sync Engine) are supported running under VMWare ESX 3.5 and 4.0. A search of "VMWare" in the forum returns no results. The client is asking about VMWare, but I would like to ask about Hyper-V so in addtion, what roles if any are suported runing under Hyper-V? Thanks

Well of course you'd want a Microsoft rep to confirm whether "official" support exists, but I can say that our client's environment is completely virtual running on ESX, and FIM2010 is working fine. Has been since RC1. We've also split all FIM components across seperate VMs.

This article lets you know about the Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615 and a list of participating vendors and versions: http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx Where as this one lists the applications supported for Virtualisation (including SVVP and Hyper V): http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/957006/?p=1 I see ILM 2007 FP1 on there but not FIM 2010 yet. Supported doesn't mean it wont work of course. I was putting ILM on VMWare and Hyper-V well before they were officially supported.

While lack of official support doesn't mean it won't work, it does mean that my customer can't make a purchase (or at least has to go through lots of internal hoops to justify purchase of dedeciated hardware.) Thanks for the links though, they are useful. I have sucessfully run all this stuff in a virtual environment and have observed that as long as you give it enough resources, it is happy.

Bump. The server Server Virtualization Validation Program reference above says "Yes" to VMWare (under certain conditions), but the application list above doesn't list FIM 2010. Does this mean that it is not supported, or has the list not yet been updated? My client needs an official, definitive answer on this.

It's supported on VMware in a commercially reasonable fashion. If there is an issue and you require support, one of the steps in working through the issue might be to attempt the problem repro on physical hardware or on Hyper-V.Ahmad Abdel-wahed, Microsoft