System Requirements

The VMware GemFire native client provides access for C++ and Microsoft® .NET™ Framework clients to the GemFire distributed system. It operates on platforms running Microsoft Windows, Linux (Intel), and Tanzu Application Service.

GemFire Compatibility

The GemFire Native Client supports applications that communicate with GemFire servers. Native Client version 10.4 works with Pivotal GemFire versions 9.0.0 and later.

The following table shows which versions of the Native Client are compatible with the various versions of the GemFire server.

GemFire Native Client Version	GemFire Server Version
GemFire Native Client 10 GemFire Native Client 9.1, 9.2	GemFire Server 9.x
GemFire Native Client 9.1 GemFire Native Client 8.2	GemFire Server 8.2

Application Compatibility

GemFire Native Client is compiled using 64-bit architectures for all operating systems. Linking with 32-bit applications is not supported.

Supported Platforms: C++ Client

The GemFire Native Client supports applications that run in the following client environments:

Platform	Version
Linux	Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7, 8
Linux	Ubuntu 16 (Xenial)
Windows Desktop	10
Windows Server	2016
Tanzu Application Service	TAS 2.10+

Host Machine Requirements

Each machine that runs a native client must meet the following requirements:

• A system clock set to the correct time and a time synchronization service such as Network Time Protocol (NTP). Correct time stamps permit the following activities:
  • Logs that are useful for troubleshooting. Synchronized time stamps ensure that log messages from different hosts can be merged to reproduce an accurate chronological history of a distributed run.
  • Aggregate product-level and application-level time statistics.
  • Accurate monitoring of the system with scripts and other tools that read the system statistics and log files.
• The host name and host files are properly configured for the machine.

Windows Support

For Windows C++ applications, the GemFire Native Client library, pivotal-gemfire.dll, requires the Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable Package, which you can find on the Visual Studio 2017 web page. Scroll down to “Redistributables and Build Tools” and select “Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2017”, and be sure to select the “x64” version. Install it on all machines that will run your C++ application.

Linux Support

For Linux, you can verify that you meet the native client dependencies at the library level by using the ldd tool and entering this command:

$ ldd $client-installdir/lib/libpivotal-gemfire.so

where client-installdir is the location in which you have installed the client.

The following libraries are external dependencies of the native library, libpivotal-gemfire.so. Verify that the ldd tool output includes all of these:

• libdl.so.2
• libm.so.6
• libpthread.so.0
• libc.so.6
• libz.so.1

Deactivating Syn Cookies on Linux

Many default Linux installations use SYN cookies to protect the system against malicious attacks that flood TCP SYN packets. The use of SYN cookies dramatically reduces network bandwidth, and can be triggered by a running GemFire distributed system.

To deactivate SYN cookies permanently:

1. Edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file to include the following line:

   net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 0
   

   Setting this value to zero deactivates SYN cookies.

2. Reload sysctl.conf:

   $ sysctl -p
   

TAS Support

Tanzu Application Service supports C++ native client applications.

TAS versions 2.10 and higher include the Microsoft VS 2017 C++ Redistributable DLLs.

TAS C++ Requirements

• TAS 2.10 or newer
• Ubuntu or Windows 2017 stem cells

To run your cloud native C++ application on TAS:

1. The runtime libraries pivotal-gemfire.dll and cryptoImpl.dll must be in the path of your C++ application.
2. Use cf push to deploy your application to TAS as you would other C++ applications.

Software Requirements for Using SSL

If you plan on using SSL in your GemFire native client and server deployment, you will need to download and install OpenSSL. The GemFire native client requires OpenSSL version 1.1.1.

For Windows platforms, you can use either the regular or the OpenSSL “Light” version.

In addition, make sure that your system environment variables have been configured to include OpenSSL.