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 Linux Physical Server.

Bare Metal Server Requirements

Operating System Version CPU Cores Memory
CentOS Linux

7.6 (kernel: 3.10.0-957)

7.7

7.9

8.2

8.4

 4 16 GB
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

7.6 (kernel: 3.10.0-957)

7.7

7.9

8.2

8.4

8.6 (starting with NSX 4.0.1)

 4 16 GB
Oracle Linux

7.6 (kernel: 3.10.0-957)

7.7

7.8

7.9

8.6 (starting with NSX 4.0.1)

 4 16 GB
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

12 SP3

12 SP4

12 SP5 (starting with NSX 3.2.1)

 4 16 GB
Ubuntu

16.04.2 LTS (kernel: 4.4.0-*)

18.04

20.04

 4 16 GB
Windows Server

2012 R2 Datacenter and Standard

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.

Supported Topologies

To find the completet list of supported topologies, see the NSX Physical Server Encyclopedia slide deck.

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