InterSystems Data Platforms and performance – Part 9 InterSystems IRIS VMware Best Practice Guide

This post provides guidelines for configuration, system sizing and capacity planning when deploying IRIS and IRIS on a VMware ESXi. This post is based on and replaces the earlier IRIS-era guidance and reflects current VMware and InterSystems recommendations. Last update Jan 2026. These guidelines are a best effort, remember requirements and capabilities of VMware and IRIS can change. I jump right in with recommendations assuming you already have an understanding of VMware vSphere virtualization platform. The recommendations in this guide are not specific to any particular hardware or site specific implementation, and are not intended as a fully comprehensive guide to planning and configuring a vSphere deployment -- rather this is a check list of best practice configuration choices you can make. I expect that the recommendations will be evaluated for a specific site by your expert VMware implementation team. A list of other posts in the InterSystems Data Platforms and performance series