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 Virtualized Environment (Hypervisors) or Physical server (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
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 (exists only in the Developer ISO file).
The Developer edition ISO file name is DPOD-Developer-CentOS-<version>.iso, and can be downloaded 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 downloaded from PPA. For example: DPOD_CentOS_1.0.11.0.iso
Non-Appliance Mode (Compressed Executable file) - DPOD_RedHat_<version>.cef - can be downloaded from PPA. For example: DPOD_RedHat_1.0.11.0.cef

Customers who expect to handle a load of over 200 TPS are required to complete a sizing process by opening a support ticket to IBM Support - L2.

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

Available in Edition	Load Configuration Architecture	Goal	TPS Limit	Supports Virtual Environment	Cores	RAM	Storage
Developer	Development	Developers only. In rare cases can be used for functional POCs. Under restricted license.	2-3 TPS	Can be virtual ⁽⁷⁾	2 cores ⁽¹⁾	4 GB ⁽³⁾	Single disk: 25GB
Standard	Minimal	POCs and evaluation. Limited history period to reduce memory requirements.	5 TPS	Can be virtual ⁽⁷⁾	4 cores ⁽¹⁾	18 GB ⁽³⁾	OS: 40 GB Install: 40 GB Data⁽²⁾: 100+ GB
Standard	Low	Environment with low load levels	40 TPS	Can be virtual ⁽⁷⁾	6 cores ⁽¹⁾	32 GB ⁽³⁾	OS: 40 GB Install: 40 GB Data⁽²⁾: 100+ GB
Standard	Medium	Environment with moderate load	80 TPS	Can be virtual ⁽⁷⁾	8 cores ⁽¹⁾	64 GB ⁽³⁾	OS: 40 GB Install: 40 GB Data⁽²⁾: 300+ GB
Standard	High	Environment with moderate load	120 TPS	Can be virtual, but not recommended ⁽⁷⁾	16 cores ⁽¹⁾	128 GB ⁽³⁾	OS: 40 GB Install: 40 GB Data⁽²⁾: 1,000+ GB
Standard	High_20dv	Environment with medium to high load	200-1500 TPS ⁽⁶⁾	Must be installed on a physical server	24 cores ⁽⁵⁺⁶⁾	256-512 GB ⁽⁶⁾	TBD ⁽⁶⁾
Standard	High_20dv	Environment with very high load	2750 TPS ⁽⁶⁾	Must be installed on a physical server	TBD ⁽⁶⁾	TBD ⁽⁶⁾	TBD ⁽⁶⁾
Standard	Federated Architecture	Environment with very high load	>2750 TPS - TBD ⁽⁶⁾	Must be installed on physical servers	TBD ⁽⁶⁾	TBD ⁽⁶⁾	TBD ⁽⁶⁾

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

⁽⁷⁾ 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.

High Load capacity plan sizing example

To process a maximum of 10,000 TPS (assuming ~35 Syslog records per transaction on average), the DPOD environment should 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 RAM and storage specification as described below⁽⁵⁾.
Each DPOD environment will support no more than 10,000 TPS and up to 7 nodes.
Customers with higher load than that are expected to create separate environments, each can handle up to 10,000 TPS.

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 7.7-7.8 - x86-64 bit only on supported HW or Hypervisor as stated above.
RHEL 7.7-7.8 - 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.

Browser not supported