Java in Virtual Machines on VMware ESX: Best Practices

This paper discusses best practices for running Java-based software in VMware ESX virtual machines. These guidelines will help to get the best from the Java applications and application servers while running them on VMware Infrastructure 3. Java applications have been found to perform very well in virtual machines on ESX, coming close to native performance in many cases. The main difference between running Java applications in virtual machines on ESX and running those same applications on physical systems essentially boils down to the choice of memory size for the ESX virtual machine and the number of virtual CPUs used in the ESX virtual machine.