Monitored Device (DataPower Gateway) Requirements

• Supported Gateway firmware levels are 10.0.x and 2018.4.x.
  Some functionalities are also available for lower firmware levels. For more details please see Release Notes.
• Supported API Connect versions are 10.0.x, 2018.4.x and 5.0.8.x.
• DPOD only supports gateways with supported firmware levels that meet the minimum system requirements for DataPower Gateways.
• The DataPower Gateway language must be set to English.

Physical HW or Hypervisor

DPOD can be installed on either a virtual environment (hypervisors) or physical servers (Intel(C) based CPUs and supporting CentOS/RedHat 7.x OS). Consult the table below for information to support this decision.

For a production environment suitable for hypervisor (virtual environment), the virtual appliance is supported on the following VMware hypervisors:

• VMWare ESX - v6.0, v6.5, v6.7
• VMWare Workstation/Player - v14, v15, v16
• VMware Fusion v11.0, v11.5, v12.0, v12.1
• PureApp (only on Intel Processors) - no pattern yet available, can be provided only as an imported OVA.
• For Hyper V support - contact your IBM sales representatives.

Resources Requirements

DPOD offers 6 basic load configuration setups:

• One load configuration architecture for development (exists only in the Developer Edition ISO file).
  The Developer Edition ISO file name is DPOD-Developer-CentOS-<version>.iso, and can be downloaded from Fix Central.

• Five load configuration architectures for the Standard Edition, available as: 

• Appliance Mode (ISO file) - DPOD_CentOS_<version>.iso - can be downloaded from PPA.

• Non-Appliance Mode (Compressed Executable file) - DPOD_RedHat_<version>.cef - can be downloaded from PPA.

Please consider the following rules of thumb for sizing:

• Customers that expect a load of up to 120 TPS (across all devices, including future growth) may choose one of the options from the table below.
• Customers that expect a load of over 120 TPS (across all devices, including future growth) are required to complete a sizing process by opening a support ticket with IBM Support.
• Currently a single installation of DPOD cell environment with 7 physical cell members can process up to ~20,000 TPS (assuming ~35 Syslog records per transaction on average). Customers with higher load than that may create several installations, each can handle up to ~20,000 TPS.

⁽¹⁾ The hosting server (e.g. ESXi) CPU utilization should not exceed 80%. To ensure best indexing performance, the virtual machine configuration should be set to have reserved CPUs.

⁽²⁾ Local SSD preferred - should be located on a data store separated from the other disks.

⁽³⁾ To ensure best query performance, the virtual machine configuration should be set to have reserved memory.

⁽⁴⁾ The TPS is the maximum total transaction load across all devices/domains connected to DPOD.

⁽⁵⁾ Virtual deployments performance cannot be guaranteed. Virtual deployments performance depends on the server hosting the VM (ESX), its configuration, the overall load it is experiencing at any given time from any of its VMs, and especially the performance of the remote storage.

⁽⁶⁾ Customers will be provided with specifications after a sizing process with L3.

Storage Recommendation

• DPOD serves as a database and should, therefore, be configured to use very fast disks. For this reason, DPOD installation requires 3 separate DISKS  for OS, Installation, and Data.
• Usage of slow disks is not recommended and will impact the amount of time between the creation of transaction logs and the availability of the data on DPOD's dashboards.
• For Physical hardware installations that can utilize HW RAID services the following setup is recommended:
  • RAID5 - 40GB - for OS disk
  • RAID5 - 40GB - for App disk
  • RAID0 - Depends on volume - for Data disk. 
    
    
• For each 1 TB of data 64 GB of RAM is recommended for responsive queries (dashboards and filters). Please keep the ratio between RAM and Data storage size to be 1GB RAM: 16GB Data Disk (recommended) and no more than 1 GB RAM:32GB DISK (minimal).

Network Requirements

DPOD requires at least one network interface for accessing DPOD's User Interface and communications with Gateway's Management Interface.

Operating System Requirements - only applicable to Non-Appliance mode

• CentOS 7.7-7.9 - x86-64 bit only on supported HW or Hypervisor as stated above.
• RHEL 7.7-7.9 - x86-64 bit only on supported HW or Hypervisor as stated above.
• Server OS must be a fresh install without any other installed products.
• In Non-Appliance mode the OS support is not covered but recommendations will be provided.

• Third-party software such as antivirus, cybersecurity, monitoring, APM, endpoint protection, backup, etc. might significantly decrease the performance of DPOD and impact its functionality. During the resolution of issues, DPOD support will ask the customer to disable any 3rd party software in order to isolate the issues and verify their source. Support cannot be provided if the 3rd party tools are not disabled.

Client Requirements

DPOD's Web Console requires the following for administration and end-users:

• A minimum screen resolution of 1280x720 pixels.
• Supported web browsers are:
  • Firefox - latest 2 versions
  • Chrome - latest 2 versions
  • Safari -  latest 2 versions
  • Microsoft Edge Chromium - latest 2 versions
  • Internet Explorer 11+ (not Edge)

Utility Software for Administrators

• An SSH client to connect to the DPOD appliance once installed.

• An FTP Client software to upload/edit files in the appliance when required.