Minimum hardware requirements

The following topics describe hardware requirements for components of a BMC Server Automation system:

• BMC Server Automation Console and Network Shell
• Network Shell only requirements
• Application Server requirements
• RSCD agent requirements
• File server requirements
• PXE server requirements
• Data store server requirements
• Patch management requirements

BMC Server Automation Console and Network Shell

The following table lists the hardware requirements for the BMC Server Automation Console and Network Shell installed on the same host computer.

 ¹Disk space required for a running console. Installation of the console and Network Shell requires only 1 GB of disk space.

Network Shell only requirements

This section describes the hardware requirements of Network Shell when it is the only BMC Server Automation component installed on a host computer.

Network Shell on any platform requires a minimum of 64 MB of RAM when running--BMC recommends 128 MB or greater.

Installation of Network Shell on any platform requires a minimum of 30 MB of available disk space--BMC recommends 50 MB or greater.

Application Server requirements

System requirements

The following table lists the system requirements for the Application Server.

Maximum Java heap requirements

For recommendations for the Application Server maximum Java heap size (MaxHeapSize property), see Sizing-and-performance.

Application Server and the database server

If an Application Server participates in Application Server cluster and is configured as a job server or config server, then that Application Server must be physically colocated on the same Local Area Network (LAN) as the database server hosting the BMC Server Automation schema.

Application Server and the RCP client

The Application Server and the RCP client (BMC Server Automation Console) must be located on the same Local Area Network (LAN). Remote users can use the console through either RDP or Citrix from a remote computer to the computer where the console resides.

RSCD agent requirements

This section describes the hardware requirements for the RSCD agent when it is the only BMC Server Automation component installed on a host computer.

• Installation of an RSCD agent requires approximately 200 MB of space on Microsoft Windows platforms and 450 MB of space on Linux and UNIX platforms.

  Tip

  One way to reduce the disk space required for RSCD agent installation on Linux or UNIX is to set the INSTALL_FILES_TEMP environment variable. You can set this variable from the operating system command line before installation. For more information, see Methods-for-reducing-installation-space-on-Linux-and-UNIX.

• In addition to planning for space needed by the agent, consider the amount of space needed in the future for the Transactions folder. The Transactions folder, which is within the agent install directory, contains copies of the BLPackages you deploy on the agent. BMC Server Automation stores these copies, by default, in case you want to roll back changes from a Deploy Job. You can change the default behavior by clearing the Allow rollback check box for the associated Deploy Jobs (for more information, see Creating-a-Deploy-Job).
  If you:
  • Clear the Allow rollback check box for all Deploy Jobs targeted for the agent computer, the only file written to the directory is the deployment log.

  • Choose to keep the default setting and leave the rollback files in the Transactions directory for your deployments, the location of the Transactionsdirectory must have enough space to accommodate the large number of rollback files.

    Warning

    Each run of a Deploy Job generates a unique set of rollback files. Because these files can be large, if you are running multiple Deploy Jobs and you choose to store rollback files by selecting this option, you might generate extremely large amounts of data. In a situation like this, you should set up a prudent retention policy for storing job runs and for executing your data retention policy. Job run data should only be stored as long as you need it. For example, if you run a Deploy Job each day, you may only want to store job run data for one or two days. For more information on data retention, see Cleaning up BMC Server Automation data .

• The patch analysis function of BMC Server Automation requires the Microsoft XML (MSXML) parser version 6.0 SP2 or later to be installed on the server on which the RSCD agent is installed. You can install the RSCD agent on a computer on which MSXML is not installed, but patch analysis does not function correctly until MSXML 6.0 SP2 or later is installed.
• To mount an agent on a Linux or UNIX server, the showmount command must be available on the server.

File server requirements

A file server must have a minimum of 72 GB of available, nonredundant, disk space. BMC recommends that the file server have 200 GB or more of available RAID 5 disk space.

PXE server requirements

This section describes the hardware requirements of the PXE server when it is the only BMC Server Automation installed on a host computer.

A PXE server uses minimal processor and memory resources. Installation of a PXE server on any platform requires 1 GB of available disk space.

Data store server requirements

This section describes the hardware requirements of the PXE server and Data store server when they are installed on the same host computer.

A PXE server and a data store server typically are set up on the same computer, although that configuration is not required. The data store server holds the operating system installation files used for performing network installations of operating systems. Depending on the number of distinct operating systems that you are provisioning, you might need 1 to 10 GB of disk space to hold these files. At minimum, the data store server should have 512 MB of RAM. In addition, the data store server should have a fast, reliable network connection.

Additional requirements for the data store server vary, depending on whether it is set up on Windows or Linux and whether you are provisioning Windows or Linux to a bare metal server. The following table lists data store server requirements for all possible provisioning scenarios:

Patch management requirements

This section describes the hardware requirements of patch management.

To deploy all missing patches on a target server, the minimum recommended free space on the drive containing the staging directory of the target server is 3 GB. The disk space required during staging depends on the number of missing hotfixes on the server.