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Running TOP Server on a Virtual Machine

Can TOP Server be installed and run on a Virtual Machine that is hosted on a on-premise hypervisor (something like Hyper-V or VMWare or Nutanix)?

For the most reliable licensing mechanism on a Virtual Machine it is recommended to be running the latest version of TOP Server.
Care must be taken so that the virtualized hardware profile of the virtual machine does not change, or the license will break. In most cases, the hypervisor will dynamically generate the MAC address of a virtual machine, which will result in a broken license - to avoid this statically define the MAC address for any virtual machine that the TOP Server will be running on.
Additionally, when moving a virtual machine between two hosts special care should be taken to ensure that the MAC Address, VM UUID, and VM Generation ID do not change - which would result in a broken license binding. Cloning or copying a VM (as opposed to migrating it) will break the license binding and is a violation of the EULA. 
 
To statically define the MAC Address on a virtual machine, take the following steps, and please note that on systems with more than one network interface, the MAC address must be set statically for all network adapters.

Hyper-V

  1. By default Hyper-V is configured to dynamically generate MAC address on certain events. This will break the licensing if the VM is ever migrated, load balanced, etc - which will prevent the server from working correctly in any high-availability (HA) environment.
  2. The Dynamic MAC Generation must be manually disabled in the Virtual Machine NIC Settings. In order to do this;
    1. Power down the virtual machine
    2. Find the Virtual Machine in the Hyper-V Manager
    3. Right click the machine and open the settings
    4. Find the Network adapter and open the Advanced Features
    5. Under MAC Address specific the static MAC to be used.

VMWare ESXi

  1. Power down the virtual machine
  2. Locate the virtual machine in the vSphere Web Client
  3. Right Click on the VM and select Edit Settings. Alternatively, you can find the "Edit Virtual Machine settings button
  4. On the Virtual Hardware tab, expand the network adapter section.
  5. In the MAC Address section, select Manual from the drop-down menu. 
  6. Type a static MAC address and click OK.

VMWare Workstation

Power down the VM and locate the VM’s vmx file. View in a text editor and make the following changes:
  • Add the following lines to the file 
    ethernet0.checkMACAddress = "false"
    ethernet0.addressType = "static"

    ethernet0.address = "11:22:33:aa:bb:cc"
  • Remove the following lines from the file 
    ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
    ethernet0.generatedAddress = "11:22:33:aa:bb:cc"

    ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"

The Guide from VMWare: Assign a Static MAC Address in the Virtual Machine Configuration File

Nutanix AHV

For details on assigning a static MAC address, refer to the following Nutanix technical resource: How to set MAC address for VM NIC on AHV cluster

Nutanix indicates that a static MAC address must be assigned when first creating a network adapter.