swXtchBridge System Requirements

WHAT TO EXPECT
In this article, users will learn about the prerequisites before deploying a SwXtchBridge. It is recommended for a users to review this page before installing the swXtchBridge.

Network and cloudSwXtch Connectivity

Before deploying a swXtchBridge, a user must already have a cloudSwXtch instance running in any cloud.
A user should have network connectivity from on-premises to the Virtual Network hosting the cloudSwXtch instance. A user should be able to ping the cloudSwXtch instance from the on-premises network.

Testing On-Premises and Cloud Link
Use one of the following UDP testing tools to measure point from on-prem and into the cloud and to profile your link. This will ensure the link between on-premises and the cloud used by both the SwXtchBridge and the cloudSwXtch is optimal.
iPerf: https://iperf.fr/iperf-doc.php
Sockperf: https://docs.nvidia.com/networking/display/vmav9851/appendix+sockperf+%E2%80%93+udp/tcp+latency+and+throughput+benchmarking+tool

NIC Requirements

The SwXtchBridge requires 2 NICs with the non-primary NIC as a Mellanox or Intel card.

Mellanox: ConnectX-5 cards are preferred for the non-primary NIC. For a list of recommendations, please visit the following link: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/servers-unified-computing/third-party-adapters-listing.html?flt2_general-table0=Nvidia%2FMellanox
Intel: For a list of recommendations (drivers and NIC names), please visit the following link: https://core.dpdk.org/supported/nics/intel/

Operating System

A VM or BareMetal bridge host machine running one of the following operating systems with a Xeon class processor and a minimum 8 cores, 16GB RAM, a recommended hard drive of 40GB (20GB min) and Kernel 5.11 or greater:

Ubuntu 20.04
RHEL9

CPUs

CPUs must be at least 2nd generation Intel Core processors, supporting AVX.

Firewall Exceptions

The swXtchBridge installer script will automatically open the following ports:

firewall-cmd --add-port=80/tcp --permanent
firewall-cmd --add-port=9999/udp --permanent
firewall-cmd --add-protocol=igmp --permanent

Install Specific Requirements

There are currently two methods to installing the SwXtchBridge which is containerized.

Required Dependencies for Containerized Install

For RHEL 9 and Ubuntu 20.04, users will need the following dependencies on their SwXtchBridge machine:

pciutils
docker

For RHEL 9, you would also need kernel-extra-modules if you are running a high-performance driver.

How to Install Docker Engine

For swXtchBridge, users should install the latest version of Docker Engine for your VM. For quick installation guides, see our How to Install Docker on RHEL/Ubuntu.