The following are the minimum and recommended system requirements for SoftNAS on supported platforms.
VMware vSphere/ESX
VMware ESXi is recommended for commercial use of SoftNAS.
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CPU: 2 vCPU (min.), 4+ vCPU (recommended, based on use of compression), 8+ vCPU (large-scale use with compression and deduplication)
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RAM: 2 GB (min.), 8 GB (medium-scale use), 32+ GB (large-scale use with increased caching)
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Additional RAM for Deduplication: 1 GB per 1 TB of deduplicated storage; e.g., 50 TB deduplicated storage = 32 GB (large. scale) + 50 GB for deduplication tables. This additional memory is required when deduplication is configured for large amounts of storage in order to keep the deduplication tables in memory for best performance
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Boot Disk: 30 GB hard disk for Linux boot and system disk
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Data Disks: Virtual hard disks (VMDK) for data storage - any VMware-supported datastore is supported; e.g., local disks, fiber-channel SAN, iSCSI SAN, dual-path disks, etc.
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Hardware RAID: If your disk controller supports hardware RAID, then hardware RAID can be used to create VMware host datastores.
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Software RAID: If you prefer SoftNAS to handle RAID, then add VMDK's to the SoftNAS VM and configure software RAID in SoftNAS
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iSCSI SAN: SoftNAS can mount and support all VMware-supported disk configurations, including iSCSI SAN via software or hardware HBA
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Networking: 1 GbE (min. for up to 120 MB/sec throughput), 10 GbE (up to 750 MB/sec throughput). Other VMware-supported networks are also supported; e.g., Infiniband.
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HA Networking: It is recommended to configure VMware with Active/Active or Active/Passive vSwitch configurations so that SoftNAS running on a VMware host can tolerate a NIC or switch failure. Use of "full mesh" HA switch configurations are also recommended, so that a switch failure does not interrupt SoftNAS storage access.
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HA Host Failover: To support host failover, it must be possible for each host that SoftNAS can operate upon to have access to the Data Disks. This can be accomplished by use of dual-path disks, such as those supported by HP, for example. iSCSI or fiber-attached disks are also supported, provided VMware provides drivers.
VMware Workstation 8.x or later
VMware Workstation is useful for simulating production environments, development, QA and testing purposes. SoftNAS fully supports VMware Workstation for small-scale use.
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CPU: 2 vCPU (min.), 4 vCPU (recommended, based on use of compression)
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RAM: 2 GB (min.), 4 GB (recommended)
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RAM for Deduplication: 1 GB per 1 TB of deduplicated storage
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Boot Disk: 30 GB hard disk for Linux boot and system disk
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Data Disks: Virtual hard disks (VMDK) for data storage - any VMware-supported datastore is supported; e.g., local VMware Workstation host disk
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Software RAID: SoftNAS can support software RAID; add VMDK's to the SoftNAS VM and configure software RAID in SoftNAS
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Networking: NAT networking (default) is recommended; other network options supported by VMware Workstations (e.g., bridged, host) are also supported.
Amazon EC2
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CPU/RAM: Small instance (min.), Medium instance (recommended), Large to High-Memory Instances (large scale)
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RAM for Deduplication: 1 GB per 1 TB of deduplicated storage; e.g., 50 TB deduplicated storage = 32 GB (med. scale) + 50 GB for deduplication tables. This additional memory is only when deduplication is configured for large amounts of storage
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Boot Disk: 30 GB hard disk for Linux boot and system disk (all EC2 instance types provide enough space to install and use SoftNAS)
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Data Disks: Elastic Block Storage (EBS) provides block data storage on Amazon EC2
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Software RAID: It is highly-recommended to configure EBS disks using SoftNAS software RAID to provide increased performance and data durability
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Networking: 1 GbE (min. for up to 120 MB/sec throughput) - Small to Large instances provide up to 1 GbE connectivity. Use High I/O instances for greater network throughput.
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HA Networking: EC2 does not support HA networking.
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HA Host Failover: To support host failover, it is recommended to configure multiple, redundant SoftNAS instances running in separate availability zones or different geographic region data centers for maximum availability.
Microsoft Azure
• CPU: Micro instance (minimum, performance-limited), 2 vCPU (m1.medium for light usage), 4 vCPU (m1.large instance, recommended for general use), 8+ vCPU (m1.xlarge instance, large-scale heavy use with compression and deduplication)
• RAM: 1.7 GB (m1.small min. recommended), 8 GB (m1.large, medium-scale use), 16 GB (m1.large, large-scale use with increased RAM caching)
• Additional RAM for Deduplication: 1 GB per 1 TB of deduplicated storage; e.g., 50 TB deduplicated storage = 16 GB (m2.4xlarge) + 50 GB for deduplication tables. This additional memory is required when deduplication is configured for large amounts of storage in order to keep the deduplication tables in memory for best performance.
• Boot Disk: 30 GB hard disk for Linux boot and system disk (included)
• Data Disks – Regular Use: Standard EBS volumes
• Data Disks – High-IOPS: Provisioned IOPS EBS volumes
• Data Disks – Extreme-IOPS: Provisioned IOPS EBS volumes with SSD (hi1.4xlarge instance)
• RAID 10: Recommend configuring EBS volumes into RAID 10 configuration for I/O intensive applications and databases
• RAID 5/6: Recommend configuring EBS volumes into RAID 5/6 configuration for best space utilization (slower write performance)
• Networking: 1 GbE (min. for up to 120 MB/sec throughput), 10 GbE (500+ MB/sec throughput with 10 GbE and MTU 9000).
1) Refer to AWS for specific SSD performance metrics.
2) Ephemeral disks are local instance disks providing a much larger second-level read cache than RAM, that is typically more than twice as fast as standard EBS volumes and provide more predictable performance characteristics over time. Do not use ephemeral disks for write logs as the data stored is temporary and lost upon each reboot.