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Minimum Hardware and Software Requirements

The tables lists the hardware requirements.

Table 1: Minimum Hardware Requirements for vMX

Description

Value

Sample system configuration

For lab simulation and low performance (less than 100 Mbps) use cases, any x86 processor (Intel or AMD) with VT-d capability.

For all other use cases, Intel Ivy Bridge processors or later are required.Example of Ivy Bridge processor: Intel Xeon E5-2667 v2 @ 3.30 GHz 25 MB Cache

For single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) NIC type, use Intel Ivy Bridge CPU (or higher) and Intel x520 NICs using ixgbe driver or X710 NICs with 10G ports and using i40e driver. Any other NIC models are not supported.

For Junos OS Release 19.1R1-S1 and Junos OS Release 19.2R1 onwards, for single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) NIC type, use Intel Ivy Bridge CPU (or higher) and Intel x520 NICs using ixgbe driver, or X710 and XL710 NICs with 10G ports using i40e driver or XL710Q-DA2 NIC with 40G ports using i40e driver. Any other NIC models are not supported.

Note:

XL710Q-DA2 with 40G ports is only supported with i40e driver version 2.4.10 or later on Ubuntu 16.04 or RHEL 7.5

When using 40G ports on the vMX instances, quality-of-service (QoS) is not supported.

Number of cores

Note:

Performance mode is the default mode and the minimum value is based on one port.

For lite mode with lab simulation use case applications: Minimum of 4

  • 1 for VCP

  • 3 for VFP

Note:

If you want to use lite mode when you are running with more than 3 vCPUs for the VFP, you must explicitly configure lite mode.

For performance mode with low-bandwidth (virtio) or high-bandwidth (SR-IOV) applications: Minimum of 9

  • 1 for VCP

  • 8 for VFP

The exact number of required vCPUs differs depending on the Junos OS features that are configured and other factors, such as average packet size. You can contact Juniper Networks Technical Assistance Center (JTAC) for validation of your configuration and make sure to test the full configuration under load before use in production. For typical configurations, we recommend the following formula to calculate the minimum vCPUs required by the VFP:

  • Without QoS—(4 * number-of-ports) + 4

  • With QoS—(5 * number-of-ports) + 4

Note:

All VFP vCPUs must be in the same physical non-uniform memory access (NUMA) node for optimal performance.

In addition to vCPUs for the VFP, we recommend 2 x vCPUs for VCP and 2 x vCPUs for Host OS on any server running the vMX.

Memory

Note:

Performance mode is the default mode.

For lite mode: Minimum of 3 GB

  • 1 GB for VCP

  • 2 GB for VFP

For performance mode:

  • Minimum of 5 GB

    1 GB for VCP4 GB for VFP

  • Recommended of 16 GB

    4 GB for VCP12 GB for VFP

Additional 2 GB recommended for host OS

Storage

Local or NAS

Each vMX instance requires 44 GB of disk storage

Minimum storage requirements:

  • 40 GB for VCP

  • 4 GB for VFP

vNICs

SR-IOV

Note:

SR-IOV is only supported with Intel Ivy Bridge CPU (or higher) and Intel x520 NICs using ixgbe driver or X710 NICs with 10G ports and using i40e driver. Any other NIC models are not supported.

Support for unmodified ixgbe driver and i40e driver is available from Junos OS Release 18.4R1 onwards.

Other requirements

Intel VT-d capability

Hyperthreading (recommended)

AES-NI

Table 2 lists the software requirements.

Table 2: Software Requirements for Ubuntu

Description

Value

Operating system

Note:

Only English localization is supported.

  • For Junos OS 20.1R1 and later releases:

    • Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS

    • Linux 4.15.0-70-generic

  • For Junos OS 18.2 and later releases:

    • Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS

    • Linux 4.4.0-62-generic

  • Prior to Junos OS 18.2 Release

    • Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS

    • Linux 3.19.0-80-generic

Virtualization

  • QEMU-KVM 2.11.1(Debian 1:2.11+dfsg-1ubuntu7.20) For Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS (For Junos OS Release 20.1R1)

  • QEMU-KVM 2.0.0+dfsg-2ubuntu1.11

Required packages

Note:

Other additional packages might be required to satisfy all dependencies.

The required packages might change depending upon the supported Ubuntu version.

  • For Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS.

    bridge-utils qemu-kvm libvirt-bin python python-netifaces,vnc4server libyaml-dev python-yaml numactl libparted0-dev libpciaccess-dev libnuma-dev libyajl-dev libxml2-dev libglib2.0-dev libnl-3-dev python-pip python-dev libxslt1-dev

  • The required packages (Previous releases)

    bridge-utils qemu-kvm libvirt-bin python python-netifaces vnc4server libyaml-dev python-yaml numactl libparted0-dev libpciaccess-dev libnuma-dev libyajl-dev libxml2-dev libglib2.0-dev libnl-dev python-pip python-dev libxml2-dev libxslt-dev

Libvirt versions:

  • libvirt 1.2.19

  • libvirt 1.3.1 (Junos OS 18.2 and later releases)

  • libvirtd (libvirt) 4.0.0 (Junos OS Release 20.1R1 and later releases)
Note:

Use the apt-get install pkg name or sudo apt-get install <pkg-name> commands to install a package.

Table 3 lists the software requirements for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Table 3: Software Requirements for Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Description

Value

Operating system

Note:

Only English localization is supported.

  • Junos OS Release 20.3R1 and later releases

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.7

    Kernel: 3.10.0-1062.4.1.el7.x86_64

  • Junos OS Release 19.4R1

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.6

    Kernel: 3.10.0-862.el7.x86_64

  • Junos OS Release 19.1R1-S1 and Junos OS Release 19.2R1

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.5 (Maipo)

    Kernel: 3.10.0-862.el7.x86_64

  • Junos OS Release 17.4R1

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2

    Kernel: 3.10.0-327.4.5

  • Junos OS Release 17.3R1

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3

    Kernel: 3.10.0-514.6.2

Virtualization

QEMU-KVM 1.5.3

Required packages

Note:

SR-IOV requires these packages: kernel-devel gcc

python27-python-pip python27-python-devel numactl-libs libpciaccess-devel parted-devel yajl-devel libxml2-devel glib2-devel libnl-devel libxslt-devel libyaml-devel numactl-devel redhat-lsb kmod-ixgbe libvirt-daemon-kvm numactl telnet net-tools

Note:

libvirt 1.2.17 or later
Note:

Use the yum install pkg name command to install a package.

Table 4 lists the software requirements for CentOS.

Table 4: Software Requirements for CentOS

Description

Value

Operating system

Note:

Only English localization is supported.

CentOS 7.2

Linux 3.10.0-327.22.2

Virtualization

QEMU-KVM 1.5.3

Required packages

python27-python-pip python27-python-devel numactl-libs libpciaccess-devel parted-devel yajl-devel libxml2-devel glib2-devel libnl-devel libxslt-devel libyaml-devel numactl-devel redhat-lsb kmod-ixgbe libvirt-daemon-kvm numactl telnet net-tools

Note:

libvirt 1.2.19

To avoid any conflicts, install libvirt 1.2.19 instead of updating from libvirt 1.2.17.
Note:

Use the yum install pkg name command to install a package.

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