Product Characteristics

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Product Characteristics

This section describes the latest product characteristics for CA AppLogic.

This section contains the following topics:

Dimension Limits

Hardware Compatibility

Software Compatibility

Dimension Limits

CA AppLogic has the following dimension limits

Key System Dimensions

Xen: maximum of 128 servers per grid supported (tested on up to 60 servers)
31 grids per back-end LAN
1024 applications per grid, up to 1024 applications running simultaneously

Other Dimensional Limits

Note: For more information, see OS Support Limitations.

Per application
- 512 network interfaces per application
Per appliance, common dimensions
- 64GB RAM
- 16 CPU (1600%)
- 2000 Mbps bandwidth for 1G-based grids, 20000 Mbps for 10G-based grids
- 1 default network interface
Note: Appliances may have multiple external interfaces.
Per appliance: Linux
- 32-bit (128GB memory limit) and 64-bit (256GB memory limit)
- Volumes: Xen PV: 12 and Xen HVM: 4
- External interfaces and terminals (including the default interface): Xen: 15
Per appliance: Windows 2003/2008/2012 Server, Windows 7/8 (Standard/Enterprise/DataCenter/Web R2 Editions, Standard SP2 Edition)
- 32-bit and 64-bit (R2 for 2008 server)
- 4 volumes
- External interfaces and terminals (including the default interface): Xen: 8
- Maximum CPUs and memory are dictated by Microsoft. Please check the Microsoft website for resource limitations based on the edition of Windows that you are using.
Per server
- 1024 virtual volumes (counting each mirror as a separate virtual volume)
- Xen:
- 511 shares (counting each mirror as a separate share)
- 511 mounts (counting each mirror mounted as a separate mount; i.e., 255 if mirroring by two)
- 100 appliances (due to a CA AppLogic internal limitation, no more than 90 HVM-based appliances may be used
Per virtual volume (volume size)
- volumes used in Linux: up to 2TB-1MB
- volumes used in Windows: up to 2TB-1MB
Grid controller High-Availability
- maximum of 1 primary server; where the grid controller VM is currently running
- maximum of 7 secondary servers; where the grid controller may end up running in case of primary server failures
  - CA AppLogic has been certified to use up to 7 secondary servers
Network High-Availability (physical network topology)
- maximum of 2 switches for each network; external and backbone (4 switches in total)
  - each pair of switches must be of the same make/model and they must be identically configured
  - each switch must have LLDP enabled (link layer discovery protocol)
- maximum of 4 NICs per physical server (2 NICs for the external network, 2 NICs for the backbone network)
Automatic Volume Repair
- maximum of 1 volume repair scheduled per server

Note: If you need different dimensions, contact CA Support.

Hardware Compatibility

Adhere to the following guidelines:

BFC control node (distribution server)
- 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 Installation feature, you must install CentOS 5.8 in advance.
- YUM repository (external or local for OS updates)
CA AppLogic grid nodes
- Cisco UCS
- X86, multi-core (dual, quad, dual-dual, 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
  - Intel hyperthreading is automatically disabled by CA AppLogic and is not used
  - 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 CA 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 6.3 (excl. Adaptec AHA-15xx). Additional hardware requirements and compatibility details are available.
CA AppLogic has not been certified with any hardware RAID solutions and 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 CA AppLogic with their own RAID solutions but these types of configurations have not been certified and tested by CA.
- SAN support:
  - NFS only (Network File System Protocol) – no other protocols are supported at this time.
  - Ensure SAN is accessible from all servers within the same backbone on the 192.168.0.0/16 network, and that persistent routes are in place on the SAN so the servers can exchange network traffic with the SAN. The servers of a grid automatically configure themselves to access the SAN based upon the SAN configuration specified upon grid installation.
  - Ensure that SAN exposes a single NFS read-write share that is accessible from all servers within the same backbone on the 192.168.0.0/16 network. You can configure the NFS share to be async or sync (for ESX-based grids, only sync is supported).
  - Ensure that the NFS share has at least 500GB of free space for every grid that uses the share. For example, if the NFS share is to be used for five different grids, the share should have 2.5TB of free disk space.
- Two supported Gigabit or 10GB Ethernet adapters. For example, 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.
    Note: Network High Availability is supported when using 1G and 10G 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)
- Supported: most Gigabit Ethernet network adapters supported by CentOS 6.3. Additional hardware requirements and compatibility details are available.
IPMI 1.5 support for server power control and mgmt strongly recommended (see below for details)
Firewall access through port 22 (SSH) to grm.3tera.net and download.3tera.net for all servers
CA 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
Networking hardware: 2 non-blocking gigabit Ethernet layer 2 switches, or 10GE (one for external network, one for backbone network)
- All ports must be on the same switch, no cascading
- Must have as many ports as you have servers, plus one
- The spanning tree protocol (STP) must be disabled on the switches
- Power Management Network Switch (IPMI v1.5 or better) strongly recommended
- 10GE: Must have jumbo frames enabled (supported only for the backbone network) on backbone network switch(es). CA AppLogic automatically enables jumbo frames within the grid if a 10GE backbone network is detected
- If using a network HA configuration:
  - must have 2 of each type of switch (2 external switches and 2 backbone switches)
  - each switch must have LLDP enabled (link layer discovery protocol)
  Note: To use the VLAN tagging feature of CA AppLogic, the switch must support VLAN’s
- Certified:
  - 10G switches
    Force10 S2410P - 24 port 10GigE XFP switch
    
    Cisco Catalyst 4900M
    
    IBM RackSwitch G8124E
  - 1G switches for network HA and non-network HA configurations
    Cisco WS-C3560E-24TD
    
    Cisco WS-C3560E-48TD
    
    Cisco WS-C3560E-24TD
    
    Cisco WS-C3750G-24TS-1U
    
    Cisco WS-C2960G-48TC-L
    
    Cisco WS-C2960G-24TC-L
    
    Cisco IOS Software; C3560 Software (C3560-IPSERVICESK9-M); Version 12.2(40)SE
Power-control for servers (IPMI-based)
- CA AppLogic is certified to work with the following IPMI configurations:
  - 1. IPMI cards directly connected to the backbone configured to use non-routable IPs (10.x.x.x), separate backbone from the servers used in CA AppLogic grids; accessible only through VPN on the internal network
  - 2. IPMI cards configured to use routable IPs; accessible from the external network using name/password (non-VPN)
- The following IPMI configurations may work but have not been certified by CA:
  - Same as option #1 above except accessible through VPN on the external network
  - Same as option #2 above except that the IPMI is accessible from the internal network using name/password (non-VPN)

Note: If you have different network or storage devices, contact CA Support.

Software Compatibility

Adhere to the following guidelines:

CA AppLogic Hypervisor Support
- Xen 4.1.2 (Linux kernel 3.2.2 stable)
- Xen Paravirtualization
Appliances: all operating systems listed in this section were verified using iso2class and, when needed, hvm2pv
Note: For more information, see OS Support Limitations.
- Linux based
  - 32-bit/64-bit Linux OS (a mix of 32-bit/64-bit appliances may be running on the same grid)
  - Kernel 2.6.32 with Xen 4.1 support and all later kernels/Xen support
  - 32-bit/64-bit Tested: CentOS 5.9/6.3, RHEL 5.9/6.2, Ubuntu 10.04/12.04/12.10, Debian 6, Fedora 16/17/18, Suse Enterprise Linux 11, OpenSuse 12.2
  - Supported: all Linux distros based on recent 2.6 kernel. For additional information, refer to the Linux Installation section of the Appliance Developer Guide.
- Windows 2003/2008 Server based
  - 32-bit and 64-bit
  - Windows Server 2003 R2, 32 and 64-bit: Standard/Enterprise/DataCenter/Web Editions
  - Windows Server 2008, 32-bit only: Standard/Enterprise/DataCenter/Web Editions
  - Windows Server 2008 R2, 64-bit: Standard/Enterprise/DataCenter/Web Editions
  - Windows 2003 Server 32/64-bit and Windows 2008 Server 32/64-bit are supported with the Halsign Turbogate PV drivers provided with the release
- Windows 2012 Server based
  - 64-bit
  - Standard/DataCenter Editions
- Windows 7/8 based
  - 32-bit and 64-bit
  - Windows Enterprise Edition
Appliance volumes
- File systems supported: ext2, ext3, ext3-snapshot, ext4, reiserfs, fat16, fat32, NTFS
- Swap volumes are supported and optional for appliances
- Integration services for other file systems are available
CA AppLogic GUI
- Browser support: Microsoft Internet Explorer on Windows, Mozilla Firefox on Windows, Linux, or MAC, Google Chrome, Google Chrome on Windows, Linux, or MAC, Apple Safari on MAC
- CA AppLogic has been certified to work with the following browsers:
  - Internet Explorer 9 and 10
  - FireFox 25.0
  - Chrome 31.0
  - Safari 6.0.4

Note: If you are interested in other Linux distros, file systems, and software infrastructure, contact CA Support.