Hardware Specifications

To run an OnApp installation, you need to set up one Control Panel server, at least two compute resource servers, and one backup server. These server instances are required to handle your environment as follows: 

  • Control Panel Server 

    The Control Panel server hosts the OnApp user interface and database, as well as handles all cloud management processes. You do not need to set up a separate database server for your OnApp installation. OnApp provides full compatibility of Control Panel UI with Google Chrome and Firefox web browsers where JavaScript is enabled. 

  • Compute Resource Servers 

    The compute resource servers provide CPU, RAM, and storage resources for applications and virtual servers that you or your users run in the cloud. A certain amount of CPU and RAM on each server is reserved for a compute resource (hypervisor) and the storage controller system. The remaining resources are available for allocation to virtual servers. You can set up at least two compute resource servers and scale out based on your needs. 

  • Backup Server 

    The backup server stores virtual server backups and templates from which you can create virtual servers. It also handles disk related transactions, such as provisioning virtual servers, taking backups, and resizing disks. The backup server may be optional for a staging environment, however, it is critical for an environment running production workloads. The backup server should include a backup storage volume that can be a local disk array or a mounted SAN/NAS storage. 

This document provides hardware suggestions and recommendations for the minimum size of servers you can use to set up each server in your environment. Here you can also find information about OnApp Integrated Storage and requirements for local storage. 


If you have any questions regarding hardware specifications, please contact out support team to get assistance.

See also: 

Use Cases

Software Specifications

Networking

Storage

Servers


To set up a Control Panel server, you can use hardware with the following specifications:


Processor

8 Cores CPUs
lntel Xeon e5-2640 v3 or similar

Memory

64+ GB DDR4 RAM

Disks

2 x 500 GB SSD

RAID

RAID 1

Network Interfaces

2 x 1 Gbps+


To set up a compute resource server, you can use hardware with the following specifications:


Processor

8 Core CPUs
Intel Xeon e5-2640 v3 or similar

Memory

64 GB DDR4 RAM

Disks

2-4 x 500 GB - 1 TB SATA/SAS/SSD (for VS storage)
1 x 500+ GB NVMe (for caching)

RAID

PCIe Gen3
PERC H730 1 GB Cache or similar
Pass-through / JBOD Mode

Network Interfaces

2 x 1 Gbps+ and 2 х 10 Gbps+


To set up a backup server, you can use hardware with the following specifications:


Processor

8 Core CPUs
Intel Xeon e5-2620 v3 or similar

Memory

32+ GB DDR4 RAM

Disks

12 x 2 TB SAS

RAID

RAID 5/6/10

Network Interfaces

1 x 1 Gbps+ and 2 х 10 Gbps+


To set up a network, you can use hardware with the following specifications:

2 x High performance switches with 48 x 10 GbE and 4 x 40 GbE ports.


Integrated Storage enables you to build a scalable and resilient distributed SAN by polling disks that are attached to compute resources. As a result, you can create one or more virtual data stores that span multiple physical drives on compute resources with RAID-like replication and striping across drives.

The following requirements are recommended to implement Integrated Storage:

  • Integrated Storage can group together any number of drives across any compute resource. We recommend at least two drives per compute resource to enable redundant data store configurations.
  • At least one dedicated NIC assigned per compute resource for the storage network (SAN).
  • IGMP snooping must be disabled on a storage switch for a storage network.
  • Enterprise-grade SSD drives for the best performance and reliability.
  • Every compute resource in a zone should have identical disks (same model and capacity) and storage network bandwidth.


If you want to use local storage, the following requirements are recommended to implement:

  • At least one dedicated partition on each compute resource.
  • A separate disk from the primary OS drive is recommended.