# Pros and cons of installing Discourse on a NON-virtual machine?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/pros-and-cons-of-installing-discourse-on-a-non-virtual-machine/13677>\
**Category:** Self-hosting\
**Tags:** hosting\
**Created:** [12 مارس 2014، 8:24م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/pros-and-cons-of-installing-discourse-on-a-non-virtual-machine/13677 "2014-03-12T20:24:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

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**Author:** ![snarke](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/snarke/32/3903_2.png) [@snarke](https://meta.discourse.org/u/snarke)\
**Post date:** [12 مارس 2014، 8:24م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/pros-and-cons-of-installing-discourse-on-a-non-virtual-machine/13677/1 "2014-03-12T20:24:47Z")

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The installation guide is pretty clear that one of the downsides of using a Virtual Machine to host Discourse is the potential performance hit. Lots of ram and multiple drives are recommended to help alleviate this. I assume the upsides are mostly that you can build/install a known environment, and that if it goes kerblooey, it doesn’t take other stuff down with it.

Now, I already _have_ an Ubuntu server with hardware RAID drives, Postgres 9.1 and Ruby. Instead of installing a VM _on_ my server, why not just install Discourse on the ‘real’ server?  
Or, I have a spare server that isn’t even running right now. It would appear that running on a non-virtual machine means instead of steps 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, I have just step 3, and that’s it. I’m just not sure what hidden downsides of non-virtuality might be.

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