Pre-requisites

This page lists the minimum pre-requisites to meet for a new esReven installation of the server. When in doubt, don't hesitate to contact us.

Hardware requirements

CPU

An x86_64 desktop processor is good enough in a large number of cases.

Do provision at least 4 processing units per user (cores, vCpu...).

The main CPU bottleneck, when using esReven with a high performance storage solution, is the replay step, which is using around 4 cores and is highly dependent on single core performance (high frequency and/or high IPC) of the CPU.

You can replay and analyze an unlimited number of scenarios at a time, so determining how many cores are needed will depend on your usage of esReven.

Our recommendation is to choose a high-frequency Intel or AMD processor with at least 8 cores. Besides, the most recent processor, the most performance you will get out of it. So, last-gen processors are the best choice. On lower-performance processor, Reven can still be used but will be slower.

A desktop processor is good enough in a large number of cases. Server processors tend to have a higher number of cores but reduced single core performance. They may be preferred when your workload consists of several concurrent replay tasks or scenario analysis sessions. Mobile processors can be used although they often exhibit lower performance than desktop processors.

RAM

Do provision at least 16GB of RAM per user.

In terms of capacity, we recommend to have at least 16GB. For esReven Enterprise Edition, it also depends on your usage (number of simultaneous replays and running Reven servers).

NOTE: To avoid curbing your high-end processor, having fast enough RAM (frequency + timing) is necessary.

Storage

Do provision at least 100 GB for software installation and 500 GB of fast storage per user. 1TB per user or more is recommended to work on more unarchived scenario in parallel and reduce import/export operations.

Reven is highly I/O performance dependent, and requires at least a SATA SSD, but we recommend having a NVME SSD or better. Don't even try HDD.

Note that any type of RAID-0 configuration may help reduce the disk I/O bottleneck. For example if you have a really high-end processor and/or if you will replay multiple scenarios at a time.

We also recommend having extra HDD storage to archive unused scenarios.

NOTE: The Reven server handles different categories of data (VMs, Records, Replays...). Should you want to store these different categories to different storages, please see the Advanced System pre-requisites.

System requirements

General system requirements

  • A Linux system with kernel vanilla 4+ or kernel Redhat 3.10+
    • A Debian or an Ubuntu distribution can be used preferably: not mandatory but these are our main testing platform - we make this assumption for system commands in the rest of the document.
  • Docker installed (version 17.12.0+)
  • Docker-compose installed (version 1.28.+)
  • Devices /dev/kvm and /dev/fuse fully operational
  • A system root access with sudo

Networking requirements

  • Have access to the machine's firewall configuration to allow communication between services.
  • An active Internet access is recommended for downloading symbol information, unless you are using an offline PDB server (see also the docmentation Using PDBs on air-gapped networks for more information about this use case).

Please refer to the Advanced System pre-requisites if you need to tune the Reven networking configuration after the installation of esReven.

Installing esReven in a Virtual Machine

If you plan to install esReven in a Virtual Machine, here are some additional requiremen ts for the VM:

  • Nested virtualization must be supported in the host machine and enabled for the Reven VM. Please see the dedicated section on how to do this if you are unsure.
  • The virtual disks should be configured to provide maximum performance. The default parameters may be enough, but as this heavily depends on your setup, this documentation cannot provide more detailed installation steps. If you encounter performance problems with Reven later, this requirement may be a cause. Don't hesitate to contact us for guidance in your particular case.
  • All other hardware and system requirements must be met for esReven to run smoothly.

Once you reviewed the pre-requisites and made sure to meet the baseline, you must install the Linux OS of your choice in your VM.

Advanced pre-requisites

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