Hardware Requirements

StarlingX OpenStack has been tested to work with specific hardware configurations.

If the minimum hardware requirements are not met, system performance cannot be guaranteed.

See StarlingX Hardware Requirements to review the StarlingX Kubernetes hardware requirements. In the table below, only the Interface sections are modified for StarlingX OpenStack.

Controller, Compute, and Storage Hosts

Table 1. Hardware Requirements — StarlingX OpenStack Standard Configuration

Minimum Requirement	Controller	Storage	Compute
Minimum Qty of Servers	2 (required)	(if Ceph storage used) 2 ‒ 8 (for replication factor 2) 3 ‒ 9 (for replication factor 3)	2 ‒ 100
Minimum Processor Class	Dual-CPU Intel® Xeon® E5 26xx Family (SandyBridge) 8 cores/socket
	Platform: All cores	Platform: All cores	Platform: 1x physical core (2x logical cores if hyper-threading), (by default, configurable) vSwitch: 1x physical core / socket (by default, configurable) Application: Remaining cores
Minimum Memory	64 GB Platform: All memory	64 GB Platform: All memory	32 GB Platform: Socket 0: 7GB (by default, configurable) Socket 1: 1GB (by default, configurable) vSwitch: 1GB / socket (by default, configurable) Application: Socket 0: Remaining memory Socket 1: Remaining memory
Minimum Primary Disk (two-disk hardware RAID suggested)	500 GB - SSD or NVMe	120 GB (min. 10K RPM)
	Note Installation on software RAID is not supported.
Additional Disks	1 X 500 GB (min 10K RPM) (not required for systems with dedicated storage nodes)	500 GB (min. 10K RPM) for OSD storage one or more SSDs or NVMe drives (recommended for Ceph journals); min. 1024 MiB per journal	500 GB (min. 10K RPM) — 1 or more Note Single-disk hosts are supported, but must not be used for local ephemeral storage
Network Ports	(Typical deployment)
	Mgmt and Cluster Host: 2 x 10GE LAG (shared interface) OAM: 2 x 1GE LAG	Mgmt and Cluster Host: 2 x 10GE LAG (shared interface)	Mgmt and Cluster Host: 2 x 10GE LAG (shared interface) Data: 2 x LAG, DPDK-compatible (see “Verified Commercial Hardware: NICs Verified for Data Interfaces” below)
Board Management Controller (BMC)	1 (required)	1 (required)	1 (required)
USB Interface	1	not required
Power Profile	Max Performance Min Proc Idle Power:No C States
Boot Order	HD, PXE, USB	HD, PXE
BIOS Mode	BIOS or UEFI Note UEFI Secure Boot and UEFI PXE boot over IPv6 are not supported. On systems with an IPv6 management network, you can use a separate IPv4 network for PXE boot. [1]
Intel Hyperthreading	Disabled or Enabled
Intel Virtualization (VTD, VTX)	Disabled		Enabled

[1]

For more information, see The PXE Boot Network.

Combined Controller-Compute Hosts

Hardware requirements for a StarlingX OpenStack Simplex or Duplex configuration are listed in the following table.

See StarlingX Hardware Requirements to review the StarlingX Kubernetes hardware requirements. In the table below, only the Interface sections are modified for StarlingX OpenStack.

Table 2. Hardware Requirements — StarlingX OpenStack Simplex or Duplex Configuration

Minimum Requirement	Controller + Compute (Combined Server)
Minimum Qty of Servers	Simplex―1 Duplex―2
Minimum Processor Class	Dual-CPU Intel® Xeon® E5 26xx Family (SandyBridge) 8 cores/socket or Single-CPU Intel Xeon D-15xx Family, 8 cores (low-power/low-cost option for Simplex deployments)
	Platform: 2x physical cores (4x logical cores if hyper-threading), (by default, configurable) vSwitch: 1x physical core / socket (by default, configurable) Application: Remaining cores
Minimum Memory	64 GB Platform: Socket 0: 7GB (by default, configurable) Socket 1: 1GB (by default, configurable) vSwitch: 1GB / socket (by default, configurable) Application: Socket 0: Remaining memory Socket 1: Remaining memory
Minimum Primary Disk	500 GB - SSD or NVMe
Additional Disks	Single-disk system: N/A Two-disk system: 1 x 500 GB SSD or NVMe for Persistent Volume Claim storage Three-disk system: 1 x 500 GB (min 10K RPM) for Persistent Volume Claim storage 1 or more x 500 GB (min. 10K RPM) for Container ephemeral disk storage
Network Ports	(Typical deployment.) Management and Cluster Host: 2 x 10GE LAG (shared interface) Note Management ports are required for Duplex systems only OAM: 2 x 1GE LAG Data: 2 x LAG, DPDK-compatible (see “Verified Commercial Hardware: NICs Verified for Data Interfaces” below)
USB Interface	1
Power Profile	Max Performance Min Proc Idle Power:No C States
Boot Order	HD, PXE, USB
BIOS Mode	BIOS or UEFI Note UEFI Secure Boot and UEFI PXE boot over IPv6 are not supported. On systems with an IPv6 management network, you can use a separate IPv4 network for PXE boot. [2]
Intel Hyperthreading	Disabled or Enabled
Intel Virtualization (VTD, VTX)	Enabled

[2]

For more information, see The PXE Boot Network.

Interface Configuration Scenarios

StarlingX OpenStack supports the use of consolidated interfaces for the management, cluster host and OAM networks. Some typical configurations are shown in the following table. For best performance, StarlingX recommends dedicated interfaces.

LAG is optional in all instances.

Scenario	Controller	Storage	Compute
Physical interfaces on servers limited to two pairs Estimated aggregate average VM storage traffic less than 5G	2x 10GE LAG: Mgmt (untagged) Cluster Host (untagged) 2x 1GE LAG: OAM (untagged)	2x 10GE LAG: Mgmt (untagged) Cluster Host (untagged)	2x 10GE LAG: Mgmt (untagged) Cluster Host (untagged) 2x 10GE LAG Data (tagged) [ … more data interfaces … ]
No specific limit on number of physical interfaces Estimated aggregate average VM storage traffic greater than 5G	2x 1GE LAG: Mgmt (untagged) 2x 1GE LAG: OAM (untagged)	2x 1GE LAG Mgmt (untagged) 2x 1GE LAG: OAM (untagged)	2x 1GE LAG Mgmt (untagged) 2x 1GE LAG: OAM (untagged) 2x 10GE LAG: Data (tagged) [ … more data interfaces … ]