Cisco Cucm Virtualization Requirements May 2026

If you’ve ever deployed Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) in production, you already know: this is not a “throw it on any VMware cluster” situation.

Cisco maintains one of the most strict—and arguably most misunderstood—virtualization requirement documents in the industry. Ignoring it almost guarantees TAC will hang up on you (politely, but firmly). cisco cucm virtualization requirements

Don’t be that engineer. ✅ Hardware listed on UCS compatibility matrix ✅ ESXi build exactly as per Cisco doc ✅ 1 vCPU per physical core – no overcommit ✅ Memory reservation = full VM memory ✅ Thick eager zeroed disks on low-latency storage ✅ NTP configured inside CUCM OS (not host sync) ✅ DRS set to partially automated or disabled for CUCM VMs Need to Check Your Current Environment? Run this from the CUCM CLI: Don’t be that engineer