Before you configure the bare metal server, make sure that your server meets the supported requirements.

Important: The user performing the installation may require sudo command permissions for some of the procedures. See Install Third-Party Packages on a Physical Server.

Bare Metal Server Requirements

Operating System Version CPU Cores Memory
CentOS Linux

7.6 (kernel: 3.10.0-957)

7.7

7.8

7.9

8.0

8.3

 4 16 GB
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

7.6 (kernel: 3.10.0-957)

7.7

7.8

7.9

8.0

8.3

 4 16 GB
Oracle Linux

7.6 (kernel: 3.10.0-957)

7.7

7.8

7.9

 4 16 GB
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP3

12 SP4

12 SP5 ( (starting in NSX-T Data Center 3.2.1)

 4 16 GB
Ubuntu

16.04.2 LTS (kernel: 4.4.0-*)

18.04

 4 16 GB
Windows Server 2016 (minor version 14393.2248 and later)

2019

 4 16 GB
  • Ensure MTU is set to 1600 for Jumbo frame support by NIC or OS drivers.
  • Hosts running Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS must be upgraded from 16.04 or freshly installed.

Physical NICS

For physical servers running Linux: There is no restriction on the physical NIC other than being supported by the operating system.

For physical servers running Windows on Segment-VLAN with MTU at 1500, there is also no restrictions on the physical NIC other than being supported by the operating system.

For physical servers running Windows on Segment-Overlay or with Segment-VLAN with large MTU (> 1500), validate its associated driver support jumbo packet. To verify whether jumbo packet is supported, run the following command:

$ (Get-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty -Name “<Ethernet>“).DisplayName -Contains “Jumbo Packet”

Where, <Ethernet> must be replaced with the real adapter name of each physical NIC.”

Table 1. Virtual NICs
NIC Type Description PCI BUS ID Firmware Version
e1000e Intel(R) 82574L Gigabit Network 0000:1b:00 12.15.22.6 and later version
vmxnet3 vmxnet3 Ethernet Adapter 0000:0b:00 1.9.2.0 and later version