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VMware hypervisor and hardware considerations

Contributors dmp-netapp netapp-cgoff netapp-pcarriga

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

ONTAP Select can be deployed on the following hypervisors:

  • KVM on RedHat Enterprise Linux 8.6, 8.7, 8.8, 9.0, 9.1, and 9.2

  • KVM on Rocky Linux 8 and 9

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

  • VMware ESXi 8.0 GA (build 20513097)

  • VMware ESXi 8.0 U1 (build 21495797)

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 are reaching 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).

Upgrade to VMware ESXi 6.5 U2 or later

If you currently have ONTAP Select deployed on VMware ESXi 6.5 U1, you should upgrade to ESXi 6.5 U2 or later as soon as possible. Using ESXi 6.5 U1 can expose you to a virtual machine failure due to a known VMware bug.

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 NetApp 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 the following:

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.

Small

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

  • Memory
    24GB or greater with 16GB reserved for ONTAP Select.

  • Required platform license offering
    Standard, premium, or premium XL

Medium

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

  • Memory
    72GB or greater with 64GB reserved for ONTAP Select

  • Required platform license offering
    Premium or premium XL

Large

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

  • Memory
    136GB or greater with 128GB reserved for ONTAP Select

  • Required platform license offering
    Premium XL

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