Deployment server hardware configurations

[mfrost8]

I've just been made aware that keeping our deployment server on the same server as one of our indexers isn't working out so well for us and isn't particularly recommended for more than 30 clients (http://www.splunk.com/wiki/Deploy:DeploymentServer)

So now I'm wondering exactly what kind of a box I would run this deployment server on. I don't see specific hardware recommendations for deployment servers, but I find it hard to believe that it would need or particularly benefit from the hardware recommended for say, an indexer. A deployment server is basically a sort of glorified file/web server, isn't it?

Can one run a deployment server as a VM? What are the hardware considerations for a deployment server? If it should be physical, can it run on a fairly small server? The wiki entry above suggests that for situations with more than 30 clients "the deployment server should reside on its own splunk instance which does not have other duties." Is that other Splunk duties or any other moderate tasks/applications?

Thanks

[woodcock]

DS requires potentially very high I/O storms to the same port. Other than that, you don't need to consider very much. I have seen many DS instances as VMs. I would always use a dedicated server for the DS and have it do nothing else.