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Prerequisites and compatibility

This page describes the prerequisites and compatibility for the installation of the WEKA system.
  • The versions specified in the prerequisites and compatibility page apply to the latest minor version of the WEKA system. See the relevant release notes in get.weka.io for more details.
  • In certain instances, WEKA collaborates with Strategic Server Partners to conduct platform qualifications alongside complementary components. Contact your designated WEKA representative with any inquiries.

CPU

  • Intel SandyBridge+ processors
  • AMD 2nd and 3rd Gen EPYC processors
Ensure the BIOS settings meet the following requirements:
  • AES must be enabled.
  • Secure Boot must be disabled.

Memory

  • Sufficient memory to support the WEKA system needs as described in memory requirements.
  • More memory support for the OS kernel or any other application.

Operating system

Backends
Clients
Kernel
Configuration
  • RHEL:
    • 8.7, 8.6, 8.5, 8.4, 8.3, 8.2, 8.1, 8.0
    • 7.9, 7.8, 7.7, 7.6, 7.5, 7.4, 7.3, 7.2
  • Rocky Linux:
    • 9.1, 9.0
    • 8.7, 8.6
  • CentOS:
    • 8.5, 8.4, 8.3, 8.2, 8.1, 8.0
    • 7.9, 7.8, 7.7, 7.6, 7.5, 7.4, 7.3, 7.2
  • Ubuntu:
    • 22.04
    • 20.04
    • 18.04
  • Amazon Linux:
    • AMI 2018.03
    • AMI 2017.09
  • Amazon Linux 2 LTS (formerly Amazon Linux 2 LTS 17.12)
    • Latest update package that was tested: 5.10.176-157.645.amzn2.x86_64
  • RHEL:
    • 9.1, 9.0
    • 8.8. 8.7, 8.6, 8.5, 8.4, 8.3, 8.2, 8.1, 8.0
    • 7.9, 7.8, 7.7, 7.6, 7.5, 7.4, 7.3, 7.2
  • Rocky Linux:
    • 9.1, 9.0
    • 8.8. 8.7, 8.6
  • CentOS:
    • 8.5, 8.4, 8.3, 8.2, 8.1, 8.0
    • 7.9, 7.8, 7.7, 7.6, 7.5, 7.4, 7.3, 7.2
  • Ubuntu:
    • 22.04
    • 20.04
    • 18.04
  • Amazon Linux:
    • AMI 2018.03
    • AMI 2017.09
  • Amazon Linux 2 LTS (formerly Amazon Linux 2 LTS 17.12)
    • Latest update package that was tested: 5.10.176-157.645.amzn2.x86_64
  • SuSe:
    • 15 SP4
    • 15 SP2
    • 12 SP5
The following kernel versions are supported:
  • 5.3-5.15
  • 4.4.0-1106 to 4.19
  • 3.10
  • Kernel 5.15 is not supported with Amazon Linux operating systems.
  • It is recommended to turn off auto kernel updates, so it will not get upgraded to an unsupported version.
  • Confirm that both the kernel version and the operating system version are listed as supported, as these are distinct components with their own compatibility considerations.

General

  • All WEKA servers must be synchronized in date/time (NTP recommended)
  • A watchdog driver should be installed in /dev/watchdog (hardware watchdog recommended); search the WEKA knowledge base in the WEKA support portal for more information and how-to articles.
  • If using mlocate or alike, it's advisable to exclude wekafs from updatedb filesystems lists; search the WEKA knowledge base in the WEKA support portal for more information and how-to articles.

SELinux

  • SELinux is supported in both permissive and enforcing modes.
    • The targeted policy is supported.
    • The mls policy is not supported yet.
To set the SELinux security context for files, use the -o acl in the mount command, and define the wekafs to use extended attributes in the SELinux policy configuration (fs_use_xattr).

cgroups

  • WEKA backends and clients that serve protocols must be deployed on a supported OS with cgroups V1 (legacy).

WEKA installation directory

  • WEKA installation directory: /opt/weka
  • Boot drive minimum requirements:
    • Capacity: NVMe SSD with 960 GB capacity
    • Durability: 1 DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day)
    • Write throughput: 1 GB/s
  • Boot drive considerations:
    • Do not share the boot drive.
    • Do not mount using NFS.
    • Do not use a RAM drive remotely.
    • If two boot drives are available:
      • It is recommended to dedicate one boot drive for the OS and the other for the /opt/weka directory.
      • Do not use software RAID to have two boot drives.
  • Software required space:
    • Ensure that at least 26 GB is available for the WEKA system installation.
    • Allocate an additional 10 GB per core used by WEKA.
  • Filesystem requirement:
    • Set a separate filesystem on a separate partition for /opt/weka.

Networking

Adhere to the following considerations when choosing the adapters:
  • LACP: Link aggregation, also known as bond interfaces, is supported between ports on a single Mellanox NIC and is not supported when using Virtual Functions (VFs).
  • Intel E810:
    • Only supported on RHEL 8.6 and Rocky Linux 8.6. For other operating systems, consult with the Customer Success Team.
    • The ice Linux Base Driver version 1.9.11 and firmware version 4.0.0 are required.
  • MTU: At least 4k MTU is advised on WEKA cluster servers NICs, and the switches the servers are connected to.
  • Jumbo frames: You can set up the WEKA cluster without jumbo frames for Ethernet and InfiniBand, but this will result in minimal performance and an inability to handle high data loads. Before using this mode, it's advisable to consult with the Customer Success Team.
    For clients, jumbo frames are not necessary, but performance may be limited.

Supported network adapters

The following table provides the supported network adapters for Ethernet and InfiniBand, and their supported features.
For more information about the supported features, see WEKA networking.
Right-scroll the table to view all columns.
Adapters
Protocol
Mixed networks
LACP
Shared IP
SRIOV VF
rx interrupts
RDMA
HA
PKEY
Routed network
Amazon ENA
Ethernet
👍
Intel E810 2CQDA2
Ethernet
👍
👍
👍
Intel X540
Ethernet
👍
Intel X550-T1
Ethernet
👍
Intel X710
Ethernet
👍
Intel X710-DA2
Ethernet
👍
Intel XL710
Ethernet
👍
Intel XL710-Q2
Ethernet
👍
Intel XXV710
Ethernet
👍
Intel 82599ES
Ethernet
👍
Intel 82599
Ethernet
👍
NVIDIA Mellanox CX-7 single port
InfiniBand
👍
👍
👍
👍
👍
👍
NVIDIA Mellanox CX-7 dual ports
InfiniBand
👍
👍
👍
👍
👍
👍
👍
NVIDIA Mellanox CX-6 LX
Ethernet
👍
👍
👍
👍
👍
👍
(ETH only)
NVIDIA Mellanox CX-6 DX
Ethernet
👍
👍
👍
👍
👍
👍
(ETH only)
NVIDIA Mellanox CX-6
Ethernet InfiniBand
👍
👍
👍
👍
👍
(IB only)
👍
👍
(IB only)
👍
(ETH only)
NVIDIA Mellanox CX-5 EX
Ethernet InfiniBand
👍
👍
👍
👍
(IB only)
👍
👍
(IB only)
NVIDIA Mellanox CX-5 BF
Ethernet
👍
👍
👍
👍
NVIDIA Mellanox CX-5
Ethernet InfiniBand
👍
👍
👍
👍
👍
(IB only)
👍
👍
(IB only)
👍
(ETH only)
NVIDIA Mellanox CX-4 LX
Ethernet InfiniBand
👍
👍
👍
👍
👍
👍
(ETH only)
NVIDIA Mellanox CX-4
Ethernet InfiniBand
👍
👍
👍
👍
👍
👍
(ETH only)

Ethernet drivers and configurations

Ethernet drivers
Ethernet configurations
  • Supported Mellanox OFED versions for the Ethernet NICs:
    • 5.9-0.5.6.0
    • 5.8-1.1.2.1 LTS
    • 5.7-1.0.2.0
    • 5.6-2.0.9.0
    • 5.6-1.0.3.3
    • 5.4-3.5.8.0 LTS
    • 5.4-3.4.0.0 LTS
    • 5.1-2.6.2.0
    • 5.1-2.5.8.0
  • Supported ENA drivers:
    • 1.0.2 - 2.0.2
    • A current driver from an official OS repository is recommended
  • Supported ixgbevf drivers:
    • 3.2.2 - 4.1.2
    • A current driver from an official OS repository is recommended
  • Supported Intel 40 drivers:
    • 3.0.1-k - 4.1.0
    • A current driver from an official OS repository is recommended
  • Supported ice drivers:
    • 1.9.11
  • Ethernet speeds: 200 GbE / 100 GbE / 50GbE / 40 GbE / 25 GbE / 10 GbE
  • NICs bonding: Can bond dual ports on the same NIC (modes 1 and 4)
  • VLAN: Not supported
  • Mellanox NICs:
    • One WEKA system IP address for management and data plane
  • Other vendors NICs
    • WEKA system management IP address: One IP per server (configured before WEKA installation)
    • WEKA system data plane IP address: One IP address for each Weka core in each server (Weka will apply these IPs during the cluster initialization)
    • Weka system management IP: Ability to communicate with all WEKA system data plane IPs
    • Virtual Functions (VFs): The maximum number of VFs supported by the device must be bigger than the number of physical cores on the server; you should set the number of VFs to the number of cores you wish to dedicate to WEKA; some configurations may be required in the BIOS
    • SR-IOV: Enabled in BIOS
When assigning a network device to the WEKA system, no other application can create VFs on that device.

InfiniBand drivers and configurations

InfiniBand drivers
InfiniBand configurations
WEKA supports the following Mellanox OFED versions for the InfiniBand adapters:
  • 5.9-0.5.6.0
  • 5.8-1.1.2.1 LTS
  • 5.7-1.0.2.0
  • 5.6-2.0.9.0
  • 5.6-1.0.3.3
  • 5.4-3.5.8.0 LTS
  • 5.4-3.4.0.0 LTS
  • 5.1-2.6.2.0
  • 5.1-2.5.8.0
WEKA supports the following InfiniBand configurations:
  • InfiniBand speeds: FDR / EDR / HDR
  • Subnet manager: Configured to 4092
  • One WEKA system IP address for management and data plane
  • PKEYs: Supported
  • Dual InfiniBand can be used for both HA and higher bandwidth
If it is necessary to change PKEYs, contact the Customer Success Team.

Required ports

When configuring firewall ingress and egress rules the following access must be allowed.
Right-scroll the table to view all columns.
Purpose
Source
Target
Target Ports
Protocol
Comments
WEKA server traffic
All WEKA server IPs
All WEKA server IPs
14000-14100 14200-14300 14400-14500
TCP and UDP TCP and UDP TCP and UDP
These ports are the default for the Resources Generator for the first three containers. You can customize these values.
WEKA SSH management traffic
All WEKA server IPs
All WEKA server IPs
22
TCP
WEKA clients traffic
Client host IPs
All WEKA server IPs
14000-14100
TCP and UDP
WEKA GUI access
All WEKA management IPs
14000
TCP
User web browser IP
NFS
NFS client IPs
WEKA Server NFS IPs
2049 <mountd port>
TCP and UDP TCP and UDP
You can set the mountd port using the command: weka nfs global-config set --mountd-port
SMB
SMB client IPs
WEKA Server SMB IPs
139 445
TCP TCP
S3
S3 client IPs
WEKA Server S3 IPs
9000
TCP
wekatester
All WEKA server IPs
All WEKA server IPs
8501 9090
TCP TCP
Port 5001 is used by wekanetperf.
WEKA Management Station
User web browser IP
WEKA Management Station IP
8501 9090
TCP TCP
WEKA Home, Local WEKA Home, and web browsing
All WEKA server IPs
WEKA Home and Local WEKA Home
80 443
HTTP HTTPS
Open for both directions.

HA

SSDs

  • Support PLP (Power Loss Protection)
  • Dedicated for WEKA system storage (partition not supported)
  • Supported drive capacity: Up to 30 TiB
  • IOMMU mode for SSD drives is not supported; When IOMMU configuration is required on the WEKA cluster servers (e.g., due to specific applications when running the WEKA cluster in converged mode), contact the Customer Success Team.
To get the best performance, ensure TRIM is supported by the device and enabled in the operating system.

Object store

  • API must be S3 compatible:
    • GET
      • Including byte-range support with expected performance gain when fetching partial objects
    • PUT
      • Supports any byte size of up to 65 MiB
    • DELETE
  • Data Consistency: Amazon S3 consistency model:
    • GET after a single PUT is strongly consistent
    • Multiple PUTs are eventually consistent

Certified object stores

  • Amazon S3
    • S3 Standard
    • S3 Intelligent-Tiering
    • S3 Standard-IA
    • S3 One Zone-IA
    • S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
  • Azure Blob Storage
  • Google Cloud Storage (GCS)
  • Cloudian HyperStore (version 7.3 and up)
  • Dell EMC ECS v3.5 and up
  • HCP Classic V9.2 and up (with versioned buckets only)
  • HCP for Cloud-Scale V2.x
  • IBM Cloud Object Storage System (version 3.14.7 and up)
  • Lenovo MagnaScale (version 3.0 and up)
  • Quantum ActiveScale (version 5.5.1 and up)
  • Red Hat Ceph Storage (version 5.0 and up)
  • Scality Ring (version 7.4.4.8 and up)
  • Scality Artesca (version 1.5.2 and up)
  • SwiftStack (version 6.30 and up)

Virtual Machines

Virtual Machines (VMs) can be used as clients only. Ensure the following prerequisites are met for the relevant client type:
UDP clients
DPDK clients
  • To avoid irregularities, crashes, and inability to handle application load, make sure there is no CPU starvation to the WEKA process by reserving the CPU in the virtual platform and dedicating a core to the WEKA client.
  • The root filesystem must handle a 3K IOPS load by the WEKA client.
  • To avoid irregularities, crashes, and inability to handle application load, make sure there is no CPU starvation to the Weka process by reserving the CPU in the virtual platform and dedicating a core to the WEKA client.
  • The root filesystem must handle a 3K IOPS load by the WEKA client.
  • The virtual platform interoperability, such as a hypervisor, NICs, CPUs, and different versions, must support DPDK and virtual network driver.
Special note for a VMware platform
  • If using vmxnet3 devices, do not enable the SR-IOV feature (which prevents the vMotion feature). Each frontend process requires a vmxnet3 device and IP, with an additional device and IP per client VM (for the management process).
  • Using vmxnet3 is only supported with core dedication.
For additional information and how-to articles, search the WEKA Knowledge Base in the WEKA support portal or contact the Customer Success Team.

KMS

  • HashiCorp Vault (version 1.1.5 up to 1.14.x)
  • KMIP-compliant KMS (protocol version 1.2 and up)
    • The KMS should support encryption-as-a-service (KMIP encrypt/decrypt APIs)
    • KMIP certification has been conducted with Equinix SmartKey (powered by Fortanix KMS)