Prerequisites

1. Before installing a cell environment, make sure to complete the sizing process with IBM Support Team to get recommendations for the hardware and architecture suitable for your requirements.

2. DPOD cell manager and federated cell members must be of the same version.

3. DPOD cell manager is usually virtual and can be installed in both Appliance Mode or Non-Appliance Mode with Medium deployment profile, as detailed in the Hardware and Software Requirements.

4. DPOD federated cell members (FCMs) can be one of the following:

   1. Physical servers installed in Non-appliance Mode (based on RHEL) with High_20dv deployment profile, as detailed in the Hardware and Software Requirements.
      Physical servers are used when the cell is required to process high transactions per second (TPS) load.

   2. Virtual servers installed in Non-appliance Mode with Medium deployment profile or higher, as detailed in the Hardware and Software Requirements.
      Virtual servers are used when the cell is required to process moderate transactions per second (TPS) load, or when the cell is part of a non-production environment where the production cell uses physical servers (to keep environments architecture similar).

5. All DPOD cell members must be identical - only physical or only virtual (cannot mix physical and virtual cell members in the same cell), and with the same resources (CPUs, RAM, disk type and storage capacity).

6. Physical federated cell members with 4 CPU sockets and NVMe disks require special disks and mount points configuration to ensure performance. See Configuring Cell Members with 4 CPU Sockets and NVMe Disks.

7. Each cell component (manager / FCM) should have two network interfaces:

   1. Internal network interface - dedicated for DPOD inter-communication between the cell components.

   2. External network interface - for communicating with the rest of the network. This includes users accessing the DPOD Web Console (on the cell manager), communication between DPOD and the Monitored Gateways, communication with DNS, NTP, SMTP, LDAP, and anything else on the network.

   3. This design was driven by customer requirements and allows separation between the two types of communications, which may be used to enhance the security (e.g.: deny end-users from being able to access the inter-cell communication).

   4. We recommend that all the internal network interfaces have IP addresses which belong to a single subnet (the internal subnet), and also all the external network interfaces have IP addresses which belong to a single subnet (the external subnet). Having an internal subnet that is different from the external subnet makes it easier to configure the servers without using static routing and easier to configure the network firewall rules.

   5. A diagram demonstrating this is available in Firewall Requirements for DPOD Cell Environment.

8. Network rules should be defined as detailed in Firewall Requirements for DPOD Cell Environment.

9. Note: The performance of the cell environment cannot yet be guaranteed when DPOD is installed in AWS or Azure. If you plan to use AWS or Azure, please contact the DPOD support team for relevant guidelines and assistance.