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System Requirements

 

These topics provide system requirements for each supported environment.

Minimum Hardware and Software Requirements for KVM

Table 1 lists the hardware requirements.

Table 1: Minimum Hardware Requirements for KVM

Description

Value

Sample system configuration

For lab simulation and low performance (less than 100 Mbps) use cases, any x86 processor (Intel or AMD) with VT-d capability can be used.

For all other use cases, Intel Ivy Bridge processors or later are required.

Example of Ivy Bridge processor: Intel Xeon E5-2667 v2 @ 3.30 GHz 25 MB Cache

For single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) NIC type, use Intel 82599-based PCI-Express cards (10 Gbps) and Ivy Bridge processors.

Number of cores

Note: Performance mode is the default mode and the minimum value is based on one port.

To calculate the minimum number of vCPUs needed by VFP for performance mode:

(4 * number-of-ports) + 3

For lab simulation use case applications (lite mode): Minimum of 4

  • 1 for VCP

  • 3 for VFP

For low-bandwidth (virtio) or high-bandwidth (SR-IOV) applications (performance mode): Minimum of 8

  • 1 for VCP

  • 7 for VFP

Memory

Note: Performance mode is the default mode.

For lab simulation use case applications (lite mode): Minimum of 5 GB

  • 1 GB for VCP

  • 4 GB for VFP

For low-bandwidth or high-bandwidth applications (performance mode): Minimum of 16 GB

  • 4 GB for VCP

  • 12 GB for VFP

Additional 2 GB recommended for host OS

Storage

Local or NAS

Other requirements

Intel VT-d capability

Hyperthreading

Table 2 lists the software requirements.

Table 2: Minimum Software Requirements for KVM

Description

Value

Operating system

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (recommended host OS)

Linux 3.13.0-32-generic

Virtualization

QEMU-KVM 2.0.0+dfsg-2ubuntu1.11 or later

Required packages

Note: Other additional packages might be required to satisfy all dependencies.

bridge-utils qemu-kvm libvirt-bin python python-netifaces vnc4server libyaml-dev python-yaml numactl libparted0-dev libpciaccess-dev libnuma-dev libyajl-dev libxml2-dev libglib2.0-dev libnl-dev python-pip python-dev libxml2-dev libxslt-dev

Note: libvirt 1.2.19

Minimum Hardware and Software Requirements for VMware

Table 3 lists the hardware requirements.

Table 3: Minimum Hardware Requirements for VMware

Description

Value

Number of cores

For performance mode: Minimum of 8

  • 1 for VCP

  • 7 for VFP

For lite mode (default): Minimum of 4

  • 1 for VCP

  • 3 for VFP

Memory

For performance mode: Minimum of 16 GB

  • 4 GB for VCP

  • 12 GB for VFP

For lite mode: Minimum of 10 GB

  • 2 GB for VCP

  • 8 GB for VFP

Storage

Local or NAS

Table 4 lists the software requirements.

Table 4: Software Requirements for VMware

Description

Value

Hypervisor

ESXi 5.5 Update 2

Management Client

vSphere 5.5 or vCenter Server