Regional University Computing Center Kaiserslautern-Landau
Illustation virtual machines

Virtual Machines

A service of RHRZ is the operation of virtual machines under VMware ESX / vSphere. This service is only available to employees of the TU. You will receive an "empty" VM, which you install yourself. The operator of the VM is responsible for the correct licensing of the operating system and application software.

Costs

As of 1.1.2019 the following prices for VMs apply:

  •     2.90 EUR per vCPU and month (maximum 4 vCPUs)
  •     0.35 EUR per GB vRAM and month (max. 48 GB)
  •     2.50 EUR per 100 GB vDisk and month (max. 300 GB)
  •     Virtual disk capacity over 300 GB cannot be booked.
  •     Chargeable VMs are operated in a high-performance area of the ESX environment with controlled overbooking.
  •     Free VMs with 1vCPU, 4 GB RAM and 60 GB vDisk are operated in a standard area of the ESX environment. There is no guaranteed performance for VMs here.

Important information for operating a VM

  • Only employees at RPTU are allowed to operate VMs on our virtualization platform. You can find the application form here. The person responsible for operating the VM must ensure that the operating system and the programs installed in the VM are correctly licensed. The person must also ensure that the operating system is updated before support ends.
    • Due to current events, support for Windows 10 was discontinued on 14.10.2025. We reserve the right to shut down the Windows 10 VMs.
  • The corresponding tools or agents of the platform must be installed for the respective operating system.
  • Own snapshots
    • Never use your own snapshots as a backup
    • Each snapshot makes a VM slower
    • Never leave a single snapshot on a VM for longer than 72 hours
  • Although the VMs are backed up by us at regular intervals, the person responsible for the VM is responsible for backing up important data. Nine daily, four weekly and four monthly backups are kept by our backup system on a rotating basis.
  • The VM system administration team reserves the right to shut down the VM manually in order to restart it on another host if the VM is not moved automatically, e.g. if a host needs to be put into maintenance mode. Without tools/agent, the VM is switched off and cannot be shut down in a controlled manner.
  • Further information on provisioning and monitoring can be obtained from Mr. Henri Schmidt, Room 34/309, Tel. 3866 or from the RZ Service Center.