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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.

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 optimal number of vCPUs needed by VFP for performance mode:

  • Without CoS—(2.5 * number-of-ports) + 3

  • With CoS—(3.5 * 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 (recommended)

AES-NI

Table 2 lists the software requirements for Ubuntu.

Table 2: Minimum Software Requirements for Ubuntu

Description

Value

Operating system

Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS (recommended host OS)

Linux 3.13.0-32-generic

Virtualization

QEMU-KVM 2.0.0+dfsg-2ubuntu1.11

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

Table 3 lists the software requirements for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Table 3: Minimum Software Requirements for Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Description

Value

Operating system

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2

Linux 3.10.0-327.4.5

Virtualization

QEMU-KVM 1.5.3

Required packages

Note: SR-IOV requires these packages: kernel-devel gcc

python27-python-pip python27-python-devel numactl-libs libpciaccess-devel parted-devel yajl-devel libxml2-devel glib2-devel libnl-devel libxslt-devel libyaml-devel numactl-devel redhat-lsb kmod-ixgbe libvirt-daemon-kvm numactl telnet net-tools

Note: libvirt 1.2.17 or later

Table 4 lists the software requirements for CentOS.

Table 4: Minimum Software Requirements for CentOS

Description

Value

Operating system

CentOS 7.2

Virtualization

QEMU-KVM 1.5.3

Required packages

python27-python-pip python27-python-devel numactl-libs libpciaccess-devel parted-devel yajl-devel libxml2-devel glib2-devel libnl-devel libxslt-devel libyaml-devel numactl-devel redhat-lsb kmod-ixgbe libvirt-daemon-kvm numactl telnet net-tools

Note: libvirt 1.2.19

To avoid any conflicts, install libvirt 1.2.19 instead of updating from libvirt 1.2.17.

Minimum Hardware and Software Requirements for VMware

Table 5 lists the hardware requirements.

Table 5: Minimum Hardware Requirements for VMware

Description

Value

Number of cores

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

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

  • Without CoS—(2.5 * number-of-ports) + 3

  • With CoS—(3.5 * number-of-ports) + 3

For performance mode: Minimum of 8

  • 1 for VCP

  • 7 for VFP

For lite mode: Minimum of 4

  • 1 for VCP

  • 3 for VFP

Memory

Note: Performance mode is the default mode.

For performance mode: Minimum of 16 GB

  • 4 GB for VCP

  • 12 GB for VFP

For lite mode: Minimum of 10

  • 2 GB for VCP

  • 8 GB for VFP

Storage

Local or NAS

Table 6 lists the software requirements.

Table 6: Software Requirements for VMware

Description

Value

Hypervisor

ESXi 5.5 Update 2

Management Client

vSphere 5.5 or vCenter Server