Monitored Device (DataPower Gateway) Requirements

Supported Gateway firmware level is 2018.4.x.
- Some functionalities are also available for lower firmware levels. For more details please see Release Notes.
Supported API Connect version is 2018.4.x (compatibility mode) or API GW Service or API Connect 5.0.8.x.
Gateway language must be set to English.

Physical HW or Hypervisor

DPOD can be installed on either a Virtualized Environment (Hypervisors) or Physical server (Intel(C) based CPUs and supporting CentOS 7.x OS). Consult the table below for information to support this decision.

Hypervisor SW

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
VMWare Player - v14, v15
VMWare Workstation - v14, v15
VMware Fusion v11.0, v11.5
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 setup for development that exists only in the Developer ISO file! The Developer edition ISO file name is DPOD-Developer-CentOS-<version>.iso (Can be download from Fix Central)

Five load configuration architecture setups that exist for the Standard Edition are available in:

Appliance Mode (ISO file) - DPOD_CentOS_<version>.iso (Can be download from PPA) - for example: DPOD_CentOS_1.0.10.0.iso
Non-Appliance Mode (Compressed Executable file) - DPOD_RedHat_<version>.cef (Can be download from PPA) - for example: DPOD_RedHat_1.0.10.0.cef

The following table lists the typical usage characteristics for each setup edition, and the physical or virtual resources it requires.

Availability in Edition	Load Configuration Architecture Setup	Goal	TPS Limits recommended⁽⁴⁾	Supports Virtual Env	Cores ⁽¹⁾	Memory ⁽³⁾	Storage (GB)
Developer	Development	Developers only. In rare cases can be used for functional POCs. restricted license	2-3	Yes	2	3 GB	All: 25GB
Standard	Minimal	POCs and Evaluation. Limited history period to reduce memory requirements	5	Yes	4	18 GB	OS: 40 Install: 40 Data⁽²⁾: 100+
Standard	Low	An environment with low load levels	40	Yes	6	32 GB	OS: 40 Install: 40 Data⁽²⁾: 100+
Standard	Medium	An environment with Medium load	80	Yes	8	64GB	OS: 40 Install: 40 Data⁽²⁾: 300+
Standard	High	An environment with High load	120	Yes, but not recommended	12	128GB	OS: 40 Install: 40 Data⁽²⁾: 1,000+
Standard	High_20dv	An environment with Very High load	200 Can be increased to 1500 TPS⁽⁵⁾	No. Must be installed on a physical server	16 (Physical)	200GB	OS: 40 Install: 40 Data⁽²⁾: 2,000
Standard	High_20dv	An environment with Very High load up to 1500 TPS	1500 TPS⁽⁵⁾	No. Must be installed on a physical server	24 (Physical)⁽⁵⁾	256GB	OS: 40 Install: 40 Data⁽²⁺⁵⁾: 8,000
Standard	High_20dv	An environment with Very High load up to 2750 TPS	2750 TPS⁽⁶⁾	No. Must be installed on a physical server	Physical⁽⁶⁾	TBD⁽⁶⁾	TBD⁽⁶⁾

Customers who need to handle more than 1500 TPS will be required to use a Federated Architecture.

Customers who expect to handle the load over 200 TPS will require to start a sizing process by an open ticket to IBM Support - L2.

High Load capacity plan sizing example

A customer wants to attach a pool of appliances to DPOD. This pool generates a peak of circa 10,000 TPS ( in average about 35 Syslog records per transaction).

This customer will need to have 7 servers with 2 sockets and 2 Intel based CPUs - each with 12 physical cores of 2.6 Ghz (non turbo) and with hyper-threaded Support . Each server requires 256GB of memory, and storage specification as described below⁽⁵⁾.

1 Node = 1500 TPS

7 Nodes = 10,500 TPS.

Each DPOD environment will support no more than 10,000 TPS and up to 7 nodes.

Customers with higher load still are expected to create separate environments, each can handle up to 10,000 TPS.

Customers who plan to use more than one node or above 1,000 TPS are expected to submit a sizing questionnaire available to IBM technical sales teams.

⁽¹⁾ These could be cores on an 80% utilized ESXi

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

⁽³⁾ Best query performance is achieved by using a reserved memory configuration. A server which expected to reach 70% of the TPS Limits recommended or more in the table above should set the memory reserved

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

IBM DataPower Operations Dashboard may also be installed as a custom distributed edition (not All-in-One) that allows installation on several servers located across separate geographical locations.

This normally requires creating a custom architecture based on a sizing process.

⁽⁵⁾ To cater for 1500 TPS, customers are required to have 256GB memory, 24 Physical cores (each is Hyper-Threaded thus equivalent to a total of 48), Local storage with RAID0 across 4-8 SSD Disks (SAS 6GBs) - each supporting at least 80K Random Write IOPS 4KiB and write avg latency of less than 35 uSec. Two controllers will be required to be attached to each CPU. 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).

⁽⁶⁾ To cater for 2750 TPS, 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).

RAID Support

DPOD does not support the CentOS built-in RAID (Software Raid). The only supported RAID is the one handled by a controller

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 7.6/7.7 - x86-64 bit only on supported HW or Hypervisor as stated above
RHEL 7.6/7.7 - x86-64 bit only on supported HW or Hypervisor as stated above Hardware and Software Requirements Hypervisor SW. (7.3 is not Supported. 7.2 will be out of support in 2019H2 )
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.
Other 3rd party software products for backups, security and monitoring may be installed. However, due to diversity their impact is unknown.
During resolution of issues, DPOD support will ask the customer to disable these 3rd party tools, so that issues may be isolated and DPOD verified as their source. Support will not be provided if the 3rd party tools are not disabled.

Client Requirements

DPOD's web user interface requires the following for administration and end users:

The Web Console requires a minimum screen resolution of 1280 X 720.
Supported user web browsers are Firefox - latest 2 versions , Internet Explorer 11+ (not Edge) , Chrome - latest 2 versions , Safari - latest 2 versions

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 .

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