Triton hardware selection

This document describes the minimum hardware requirements for running Triton and provides guidance on choosing hardware.

Overview

A Triton installation requires a minimum of two (2) servers. One server will be installed as the head node (for management and orchestration services) and one as a compute node (for customer containers). Note that this configuration is not capable of supporting a high availability configuration of the Triton persistent data store (manatee), and as such is not recommended for production usage. The smallest recommended production configuration is three (3) servers - one head node, and two compute nodes.

All hardware configurations need to be reviewed by MNX before customers attempt to install Triton. There are specific configuration requirements that must be met and there are also some hardware components that cannot be supported. Any questions regarding the information contained in this document should be addressed to the MNX support Team.

Best practices

We have developed a number of best practices for Triton deployments.

• Use Triton certified hardware or other known working configurations. Please check the Triton certified hardware list for details about known-working configurations as used in production in the MNX public cloud.
• Don't buy a special variant for the head node.
• Internet access is required; this access can be via proxy if required by corporate policy.
• Only Ethernet is supported.
• Only locally attached storage is supported.
• Although keyboard+vga is supported, the use of serial-over-LAN functionality is recommended for console access.

Detailed requirements

The following sections describe the minimum server requirements to run Triton for head nodes and compute nodes.

Minimum server requirements

• 64-bit x86 Architecture

• SmartOS supports single, dual, and quad-socket systems. Any Intel E3, E5, or E7 CPUs may be used in addition to AMD CPUs such as the EPYC series, subject to the system board vendor's socket population rules. Both Intel and AMD 64-bit x86 CPUs may be used for bhyve HVM instances; however, KVM-based HVM instances require Intel VT-x and EPT support. Contact your system and CPU vendor for information about the capabilities of specific components.

Disk storage

• Must be locally attached SAS/SATA.
• Any form of Network or Fiber attached storage (such as a SAN or iSCSI devices) is not supported.
• The use of SATA end devices behind a SAS expander is not supported.
• Avoid the use of hardware RAID if possible; the use of hardware RAID will abstract the disks behind the controller, which eliminates or reduces many of the advantages of ZFS and requires that you use the RAID controller software to manage your disks.
  • If hardware RAID is used we recommend that you enable RAID Passthrough (also known as HBA mode).
  • If the hardware does not support passthrough, it is recommended that you create one logical vdev and allow the RAID controller to manage the disks. In this case, RAID level should be set to a value that balances the reliability, performance, and available space per the site requirements.
• Minimum of 3 physical disks all the same size (odd number of discs recommended).
• Usable disk capacity must be the larger of 1TB or 2x RAM (check with MNX on the usable capacity of disks).
• Recommended ratio of disk to RAM is 20:1.
• The use of SSDs that do not preserve both data and metadata on power loss is not supported and will cause loss of data and availability.

Networking

• Intel NICS (i350, X520, X540) are strongly recommended, but not strictly required.
• A minimum of two NICS are required.
• Link aggregation is supported using the LACP protocol, provided the TORS supports LACP fallback to enable PXE booting.