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ONTAP Select

ONTAP Select VMware hypervisor and hardware considerations

Contributors netapp-pcarriga dmp-netapp netapp-cgoff
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There are several hardware requirements and planning issues you should consider related to the VMware environment.

Hypervisor requirements

There are several requirements related to the hypervisor where ONTAP Select runs.

Note You should review the current release notes for your version of ONTAP Select for any additional known restrictions or limitations.

VMware licensing

To deploy an ONTAP Select cluster, your organization must have a valid VMware vSphere license for the hypervisor hosts where ONTAP Select runs. You should use the licenses that are appropriate for your deployment.

Software compatibility

You can deploy ONTAP Select on KVM and ESXi hypervisors.

KVM

ONTAP Select supports the following KVM hypervisor versions:

  • KVM on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.6, 9.5, 9.4, 9.2, 9.1, 9.0, 8.8, 8.7, and 8.6

  • KVM on Rocky Linux 9.6, 9.5, 9.4, 9.3, 9.2, 9.1, 9.0, 8.9, 8.8, 8.7, and 8.6

ESXi

ONTAP Select supports the following ESXi hypervisor versions:

  • VMware ESXi 8.0 U3

  • VMware ESXi 8.0 U2

  • VMware ESXi 8.0 U1 (build 21495797)

  • VMware ESXi 8.0 GA (build 20513097)

  • VMware ESXi 7.0 GA (build 15843807 or greater) including 7.0 U3C, U2, and U1

Note NetApp supports ONTAP Select on the identified versions of ESXi as long as VMware also continues to support the same versions.
Note ESXi 6.5 GA and ESXi 6.7 GA reached end of availability status. If you have ONTAP Select clusters with these versions, you must upgrade to the supported versions as per the Interoperability Matrix Tool (IMT).

VMware vCenter and standalone ESXi hosts

If an ESXi hypervisor host is managed by a vCenter server, you must register the host to the Deploy administration utility using the vCenter credentials. You cannot register the host as a standalone host using the ESXi credentials.

Core hardware requirements

The physical hypervisor host where you deploy ONTAP Select must meet several hardware requirements. You can choose any platform for the hypervisor host, as long as it meets the minimum hardware requirements. The following vendors provide supported hardware platforms: Cisco, Dell, HP, Fujitsu, Lenovo, and Supermicro.

Note Beginning with ONTAP Select 9.9.1 only CPU models based on Intel Xeon Sandy Bridge or later are supported.

Refer to the Interoperability Matrix Tool for more information.

Basic hardware requirements

There are several common hardware requirements that apply to all platforms regardless of the node instance type or license offering.

Processor

The supported microprocessors include Intel Xeon processors for Server, see Intel Xeon Processors for more information.

Note Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) processors aren't supported with ONTAP Select.
Ethernet configuration

There are several supported Ethernet configurations based on the cluster size.

Cluster size Minimum requirements Recommended requirements

Single node cluster

2 x 1GbE

2 x 10GbE

Two-node cluster or MetroCluster SDS

4 x 1GbE or 1 x 10GbE

2 x 10GbE

4/6/8 node cluster

2 x 10GbE

4 x 10GbE or 2 x 25/40GbE

Additional hardware requirements based on the instance type

There are several additional hardware requirements based on the node instance type.

Refer to Understand the platform license offerings for more information.

Node size CPU cores Memory Required platform license offering

Small

Six physical cores or greater, with four reserved for ONTAP Select

24GB or greater, with 16GB reserved for ONTAP Select

Standard, premium, or premium XL

Medium

Ten physical cores or greater, with eight reserved for ONTAP Select

72GB or greater, with 64GB reserved for ONTAP Select

Premium or premium XL

Large

Eighteen physical cores or greater, with sixteen reserved for ONTAP Select

136GB or greater, with 128GB reserved for ONTAP Select

Premium XL
Note There are additional disk requirements based on the platform license. See Storage and RAID for more information.