What are the considerations for virtualizing DCS operator and engineering stations?

DCS virtualization considerations: vendor support (certified hypervisors, tested configurations), timing requirements (deterministic access for engineering stations less critical than real-time control), network architecture (dedicated VLANs, latency monitoring), high availability (vMotion, fault tolerance for critical stations), resource allocation (dedicated CPU and memory for DCS applications), storage (SAN with appropriate IOPS, snapshot policies), backup and recovery (VM-level backups, DR site replication), and licensing (DCS software licensing model). Keep controllers on dedicated hardware - don't virtualize real-time control. Security: hypervisor hardening, patch management, access control. Test before deployment, especially graphics performance and response time.