---
title: Ocient System Requirements
slug: pHnhU1arJke504JUrbOk7
description: Review the hardware and software requirements needed to run an Ocient system, ensuring compatibility and performance.
docTags: 
createdAt: Thu Jul 21 2022 17:05:13 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
updatedAt: Wed Apr 08 2026 15:06:08 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
---

In order to run the Ocient Data Intelligence Platform™, you must meet several requirements for your system hardware, OS, and software. The requirements ensure that your system can run an optimized and fully functional Ocient® installation.&#x20;

These requirements apply to the Foundation, Loader, and SQL Nodes.

:::hint{type="info"}
Consult with Ocient or the System Administrator installing Ocient to determine the optimal configuration for your Ocient deployment.
:::

## Server Hardware Requirements

These are the hardware requirements for the Ocient Data Intelligence Platform node servers. These requirements include the Foundation, Loader, SQL, and Metadata Node types. Data (i.e., non-OS) drive requirements are listed separately.

### Foundation, Loader, and SQL Nodes

| **Component**      | **Requirements**                                                                                     | **Notes**                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            |
| ------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Chassis/System     | 8+ NVMe hotswap bays<br />Dual CPUs<br />M.2 slots for OS drives<br />Redundant power supplies       | Supermicro® SYS-120U-TNR or similar recommended<br />Full bandwidth PCIe connections to NVMe drives are recommended (i.e., not attached to a RAID card and not multiplexed).  Drives must appear as `nvme` devices.<br />NVMe PCIe lanes balanced between CPUs recommended (i.e. equal number of drives connected to CPU1 and CPU2). |
| CPU                | 2x Intel® Skylake or AMD® Rome or newer x86-64 server CPUs                                           | 26+ cores per CPU recommended.<br />Must support AVX2 instruction set.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               |
| Memory             | 1TB+ recommended<br />All CPU memory channels must be populated to achieve maximum memory bandwidth. | Balanced memory configuration with all memory channels populated required to achieve maximum bandwidth.                                                                                                                                                                                                                              |
| High Speed Network | 100Gbit dual port ethernet NIC                                                                       | NVIDIA® Mellanox® ConnectX-5 MCX516A-CCAT recommended.<br />Dual ports required for redundancy.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      |
| OS Drives          | 1TB+ Enterprise NVMe drives (M.2)                                                                    | RAID-1 mirroring recommended.<br />M.2 format recommended to keep all U.2 bays available for data drives.<br />                                                                                                                                                                                                                      |
| Data Drives        | See [Data Drive Requirements](./#data-drive-requirements).                                           | NVMe drives for short-term and long-term data storage.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               |

### Metadata Nodes

The optional Metadata Nodes have fewer requirements than the other nodes.

| **Component**  | **Requirements**                                | **Notes**                                                                                                                   |
| -------------- | ----------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Chassis/System | Virtual Machine or Physical Machine             | No specific chassis requirements. The system can be a virtual machine.                                                      |
| CPU            | 16+ cores Xeon-D or similar x86-64 CPU          | Must support AVX2 instruction set.<br />You might need to change the virtual machine CPU type to support AVX2 instructions. |
| Memory         | 64GB                                            | None.                                                                                                                       |
| Network        | 10 Gbps NIC or virtual NIC                      | Metadata Nodes do not require high-speed networking.<br />Dual ports are required for redundancy.                           |
| OS Drive       | 512GB Enterprise SSD or SSD-backed storage pool | NVMe is recommended.                                                                                                        |

## Data Drive Requirements

Ocient strictly requires high-performance enterprise or data center NVMe SSD drives for long-term and short-term data storage. The drives listed here have been validated for functionality and performance. They also support drive self-encryption using the OPAL standard. All data stored is encrypted at rest. Power loss protection (PLP), standard on enterprise and datacenter drives, is also required. An endurance of 0.5 drive writes per day (DWPD) or higher is recommended for Foundation and SQL Nodes, endurance of 1.0 DWPD is recommended for Loader Nodes.

- Solidigm™ D5-P5430 OPAL U.2 3.84TB-15.36TB
- Solidigm™ D7-P5520 OPAL U.2 1.92 TB-15.36TB&#x20;
- Solidigm™ D7-P5510 OPAL U.2 3.84TB, 7.68TB
- Samsung® PM9A3 U.2 960GB-15.36TB
-

:::hint{type="danger"}
Solidigm P5510 firmware versions VDV10151 and VDV10152 are known not to work properly with OPAL enabled. Upgrade the firmware to a known working version.
:::

:::hint{type="danger"}
Samsung PM9A3 firmware versions GDD5102Q and GDD5202Q are known to have issues with the `vfio-pci` driver. Upgrade the firmware to a newer version.
:::

Enterprise NVMe drives with similar or better performance characteristics and OPAL (or better) support can be considered for validation.

:::hint{type="info"}
If the Ocient System detects hardware support for the OPAL standard, then nodes enable full disk encryption on data drives by default. Ocient stores the encryption keys on the operating system drive. For the complete list of directories to back up, see [Backup and Restore](<./././Maintenance Overview/Backup and Restore.md>).
:::

### Compatible Operating System Versions

These operation systems and versions are fully supported by Ocient:

- Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® (RHEL®) version 8\* and version 9
- Ubuntu® 20.04, 22.04, 24.04
- Debian® 11, 12

:::hint{type="info"}
RHEL versions 8.3 and prior require a kernel upgrade for compatibility. There is a bug in the `uio_pci_generic` driver in the kernel provided with those versions that prevents Ocient from communicating with the NVMe drives.
:::

## Network Requirements

Ocient requires high-bandwidth connections between its database nodes to achieve high performance. It is critical for performance that the Foundation and SQL Nodes can simultaneously utilize high-bandwidth links without bottlenecks. Generally, this means that those nodes share the same switch backplane for best performance.

:::hint{type="info"}
The minimum recommended link speed is 100Gbps.
:::

### Redundancy

Redundant networking is recommended for production use cases. On the server side, dual port NICs are required to support redundancy. Multi-chassis link aggregation (MLAG/CLAG/MCLAG) using redundant switches is the recommended form of redundancy.

### Network Switch

These are the requirements for the network switches to support Ocient. No other advanced L2 or L3 features are required.

1. Enough 100G ports for all Foundation Nodes on the same backplane for best performance.

2. Multi-chassis link aggregation for redundancy (MLAG/CLAG/MCLAG depending on vendor terminology).

## Security Requirements

To secure data stored on disk, Ocient supports and recommends SEDs (Self-Encrypting Drives) that meet the OPAL (or better) standard. Using drives that support this standard, Ocient software enables encryption of data at rest on the drives. This encryption prevents unwanted data leaks, as any time a disk is removed from the system, it becomes locked, and the data can only be recovered with a key-encrypting-key that is stored off-drive.

To secure network communications, see the [Ocient Security Guide](<././././Database Administration/Ocient Security Guide.md>).

## Additional Software Requirements

Ocient depends directly on these software packages:&#x20;

- `python3`
- `sudo`
- `lz4`
- `cronie`
- `logrotate`
- `gzip`
- `pciutils`
- `ca-certificates`
- `libquadmath` (RHEL), `libquadmath0` (Ubuntu/Debian)

For database nodes, these packages are installed automatically as part of the package dependencies.

Ocient also depends on a separate installation of Java® 21, where the `openjdk-21-jre-headless` package is recommended.

## Next Step

If your system meets these requirements, proceed to [Ocient Application Installation](<././Ocient Application Installation.md>).

## Related Links

[Ocient Software Upgrade](<./././Ocient Software Upgrade.md>)

[Install an Ocient System](<./././Install an Ocient System.md>)
