Question : We are in the process of developing a virtual appliance for our customers. Should we make a 32bit or 64bit app?

A discussion has arisen whether we should develop a 32bit or 64bit virtual appliance - or both. This virtual appliance will be used in virtual data centers such as VMWare ESX/ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V.

I am not that familiar with these virtual data centers, but isnt it basically enough to create a 32bit version (at least for some years to come...)? It takes much more effort for us to have to focus on testing both 32bit and 64bit versions on all of these systems. So it would really help if we would could just focus on one version.

Because even if some customers have a 64bit versions today, they should still be able to run the 32bit version of the virtual appliance - right?

On "normal" computers, you are almost always able to run 32bit applications on a 64bit operating system. Doesnt the same apply to these virtual data centers?

Answer : We are in the process of developing a virtual appliance for our customers. Should we make a 32bit or 64bit app?

If the application on the virtual appliance doesn't need 64bit, there's no reason to make the virtual appliance 64bit. There are no benefits in doing so.

You will only get more support calls from customers trying to make the 64bit version work, on somewhat older hardware this is not always an easy (or even possible) thing to do.

By definition virtual hosts will always support 32bit VMs in the foreseeable future.