NorthStar Controller System Requirements

• Recommended minimum hardware requirements.

  • 32 GB RAM

  • 500 GB HDD

  • Intel i5/i7

  • Host must support hardware virtualization (VT-d) capability

• The NorthStar Controller supports CentOS Linux and Red Hat Linux. These are our Linux recommendations:

  • CentOS Linux 6.8 or 6.9 image–earlier CentOS versions are not supported

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8 or 6.9

  • Install your choice of Linux with the minimal ISO

  CentOS can be downloaded from https://www.centos.org/download/.

• The ports listed in Table 1 must be allowed by any external firewall being used. The ports with the word cluster in their purpose descriptions are associated with high availability (HA) functionality. If you are not planning to configure an HA environment, you can ignore those ports. The ports with the word Analytics in their purpose descriptions are associated with the Analytics feature. If you are not planning to use Analytics, you can ignore those ports. The remaining ports listed must be kept open in all configurations.

  Table 1: Ports That Must Be Allowed by External Firewalls

  Port	Purpose
  22	SSH daemon
  179	JunosVM for router BGP-LS—not needed if IGP is used for topology acquisition
  4189	PCC (router) to NorthStar PCE server
  7000	Communications port to NorthStar Planner
  7003	Communications port to NorthStar Operator
  7004	Communications port to NorthStar Operator (view only)
  8091	Web client/REST to webserver (http)
  8443	Web client/REST to secure webserver (https)
  830	Netconf communication between NorthStar Controller and routers
  17000	Cassandra database cluster
  7001	Cassandra database cluster
  7199	Cassandra database cluster
  4369	Rabbitmq cluster
  25672	Rabbitmq cluster
  35197	Rabbitmq cluster
  2888, 3888	Zookeeper cluster
  2000	Default jVision reports for IFD (supports Analytics)
  2001	Default jVision reports for IFL (supports Analytics)
  2002	Default jVision reports for LSP (supports Analytics)
  1514	Default jVision reports for RPM probe statistics (supports Analytics)

Analytics Requirements

In addition to ensuring that ports 2000, 2001, 2002, and 1514 are kept open, you need to counter the effects of Reverse Path Filtering (RPF) if your kernel does RPF by default. In that case, you must do one of the following:

• Disable RPF, or

• Ensure there is a route to the source IP address of the probes pointing to the interface where those probes are received, or

• Specify loose mode reverse filtering (if the source address is routable with any of the routes on any of the interfaces).

Two-VM Installation Requirements

Disk and Memory Requirements

The disk and memory requirements for installing NorthStar Controller in an OpenStack or other hypervisor environment are described in Table 2.

VM Image Requirements

• The NorthStar Controller application VM is installed on top of a Linux VM, so Linux VM is required. You can obtain a Linux VM image in either of the following ways:

  • Use the generic version provided by most Linux distributors. Typically, these are cloud-based images for use in a cloud-init-enabled environment, and do not require a password. These images are fully compatible with OpenStack.

  • Create your own VM image. Some hypervisors, such as generic DVM, allow you to create your own VM image. We recommend this approach if you are not using OpenStack and your hypervisor does not natively support cloud-init.

• The Junos VM is provided in Qcow2 format.

  The Junos VM image is only compatible with IDE disk controllers. You must configure the hypervisor to use IDE rather than SATA controller type for the Junos VM disk image.

  glance image-update --property

  hw_disk_bus=ide --property

  hw_cdrom_bus=ide

Junos VM Version Requirements

By default, the NorthStar Controller Release 3.0 and later requires that the external Junos VM be Release 15.1F6 or later. If you are using an older version of Junos OS (Release 14.2 or older than Release 15.1F6), you can change the NorthStar configuration to support it, but segment routing support will not be available. See Installing the NorthStar Controller 3.0.0 RPM Bundle for the configuration steps.

VM Networking Requirements

The following networking requirements must be met for the two-VM installation approach to be successful:

• Each VM requires the following virtual NICs:

  • One connected to the external network

  • One for the internal connection between the NorthStar application and the Junos VM

  • One connected to the management network if a different interface is required between the router facing and client facing interfaces

• We recommend a flat or routed network without any NAT for full compatibility.

• A virtual network with one-to-one NAT (usually referenced as a floating IP) can be used as long as BGP-LS is used as the topology acquisition mechanism. If IS-IS or OSPF adjacency is required, it should be established over a GRE tunnel.

  Note

  A virtual network with n-to-one NAT is not supported.

Deployment Scenarios

Table 3 lists the supported deployment configurations supported by NorthStar Controller Release 3.0.