Getting Ready › Hardware Requirements Guide › Hardware Requirements and Compatibility

Hardware Requirements and Compatibility

This section lists the full set of compatible disk and network controllers for AppLogic running Xen.

When selecting hardware to use for an ESX-based 3.0 grid, the hardware must conform to all of the following HCLs:

• VMware ESX HCL
• BFC Control Node HCL

For a list of hardware that is compatible with servers running AppLogic on VMware, see the following:

• Network controllers
• Disk controllers

This section contains the following topics:

BFC Control Node Requirements

Grid Nodes Requirements

Disk Controller Requirements and Compatibility

Network Hardware and Adapter Requirements and Compatibility

BFC Control Node Requirements

• Intel Pentium class processor, or compatible AMD processor (Athlon, Opteron), 2 GHz or better recommended (quad core or better)
• 2 GB RAM
• 100 GB hard disk space (to house multiple versions of CA AppLogic)
• 2 gigabit Ethernet adapters
• Unless you plan to use the Bare Metal Installer feature, you must install CentOS 5.8 in advance
• YUM repository (external or local for OS updates)
• We do not support bonded NICS on the BFC node

More information:

How to Validate Your Hardware with a Bootable USB Drive

Grid Nodes Requirements

X86, multi-core (quad, dual-quad), EMT-64, VT-enabled

• Certified: Pentium P4, Intel Xeon/Xeon-Harpertown/Woodcrest/Clovertown/Core i3, Intel Nehalem (Core i7: Lynnfield 860), AMD Opteron, AMD Athlon64
• Supported: Intel Pentium P4 or better; AMD Athlon or better
• Minimum hardware requirements for an ESX based grid node is four cores for the Backbone Fabric Controller and CA AppLogic
• Verify that Intel hyperthreading is turned off before adding the server to a grid
• Requires either Intel VT or AMD-V for hardware virtualization support (HVM)
• HVM is mandatory for running Microsoft Windows on your grid
• HVM is mandatory for using iso2class to install new appliances based on different OS distros

64-bit support (32-bit servers are not supported)

• maintainers can only use 64-bit enabled servers in their AppLogic grids

Memory

• Xen: 2 GB Minimum, 4 GB recommended, 128 GB tested
• Xen 4.1 Theoretical Maximum: 5 TB RAM per server

80 GB IDE/SATA/SAS/SCSI/SSD HDD (250 GB or larger SATA drive recommended, multiple drives/server supported)

HDD controllers

• Certified:
  • Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R)
  • Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513
  • Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] AMD-8111 IDE
  • nVidia Corporation CK804 IDE (rev a2)
  • nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev a3)
  • Intel Corporation Ibex Peak 2 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 05)
  • Intel Corporation Ibex Peak 4 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 05)
  • Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) 2 port SATA IDE Controller
  • Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) 4 port SATA IDE Controller
  • Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset SATA IDE Controller (rev 09)
  • LSI Logic / Symbios Logic SAS1068 PCI-X Fusion-MPT SAS (rev 01)
  • LSI Logic / Symbios Logic SAS1068E PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS (rev 08)
  • LSI Logic / Symbios Logic LSI1068E (rev 08)
  • LSI Logic / Symbios Logic LSI2008 (rev 03)
  • LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS
  • LSI Logic / Symbios Logic LSI MegaSAS 9260 (rev 05)
  • PERC H200 RAID Controller
  • PERC H700 Integrated RAID Controller
  • PERC H800 Controller Adapter
• Supported: most IDE, SATA and SCSI devices supported by CentOS 5.5 (excl. Adaptec AHA-15xx). Details.
• AppLogic has not been certified with any hardware RAID solutions and as such it is recommended to disable hardware RAID on all servers (each grid contains its own shared, mirrored storage pool; IP-based SAN). There are customers who are using AppLogic with their own RAID solutions but these types of configurations have not been certified/tested by CA.

2 supported Gigabit or 10GB Ethernet adapters (e.g. Intel E1000, BroadCom, AceNic, SysKonnect GE) (one for backbone and one for external network)

• For Network High Availability each node is required to have 4 NICs
• Certified:
  • Intel Corporation 82541GI/PI Gigabit Ethernet Controller
  • Intel Corporation 82571EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 06)
  • Intel Corporation 82574L Gigabit Network Connection
  • Intel Corporation 82576 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
  • Intel Corporation 80003ES2LAN Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) (rev 01)
  • Intel Corporation 82572EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller
  • Intel Corporation X520-T2 Dual Port 10GBase-T Copper Server Adapter
  • Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5704 Gigabit Ethernet
  • Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5715 Gigabit Ethernet (rev a3)
  • Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5721 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 11)
  • Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5709S Gigabit Ethernet (rev 20)
  • Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5716 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 20)
  • Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II 5709 Gigabit Ethernet
  • Broadcom Corporation 5709C Gigabit Ethernet
  • Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II 5716 Gigabit Ethernet
  • Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (as external 10/100 NICs)
  • Neterion's X3100 Series 10GbE PCIe
  • Emulex OneConnect 10Gb NIC (be3) (rev 01)

    Note: Ensure that Hotfix hf7516 is applied to the grid.

• Supported: most Gigabit Ethernet network adapters supported by CentOS 5.3. Details.

IPMI 1.5 support for server power control and mgmt strongly recommended. For additional details, see below.

Firewall access through port 22 (SSH) to grm.3tera.net and download.3tera.net for all servers

AppLogic Grid Node BIOS settings: to allow grid servers to PXE boot on the BFC backbone network so that hardware discovery can take place:

• System Security
  • Ac power recovery = ON
• Integrated devices
  • Backbone NIC set to PXE boot
  • Other NICs enable but not set to PXE
  • Boot Settings > Boot Sequence
    • Backbone NIC must be before disk
  • Power controller setup screen (separately accessed during boot sequence, often with something like Ctrl-E)
    • IPMI over lan = ON