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System Requirements

Non-Production Installs Using K3s Quickstart​

For non-production environments, the preferred method is to use the ./quickstart.sh script and run the installation on a single node using k3s. The quickstart installer under k3s has the following requirements:

  • A VM with at least 4 CPUs and 16GB or RAM (t3.xlarge in AWS)
  • At least 50GB of storage
  • Ubuntu 22.04, or 24.04
  • A DNS entry for the VM that persists across reboots
  • Decide on a port scheme for the following Ziti services.

These ports will need to be accessible by their respective clients and configured during the installation process. These ports MUST be higher than 1024 on a quickstart k3s installation. These ports need to be accessible to all identities and routers using the Ziti network in order to form a proper mesh. To run on a port lower than 1024, see the FAQ documentation.

  • Ziti Client/Control Plane Access (Defaults to 1280)
  • Router Edge/Link Listeners (Defaults to 3022)

Run the quickstart.sh installer and follow the prompts for additional information

Running the quickstart in non-interactive mode​

The quickstart installer supports being run in a non-interactive mode, which will force the acceptance of all defaults, and requires that the ziti controller's advertise address be entered as an environment variable. To run in non-interactive mode, run:

export CTRL_ADDR=MY_ZITI_CONTROLLER_DNS
./quickstart.sh -y

Minimum Production Cluster Requirements​

This is the minimum requirements to install both the Ziti components and the NetFoundry Support Stack. If a smaller installation footprint is needed, the Support Stack installation can be skipped.

Minimum Requirements for Full Installation​

  • 4 CPU cores across the worker node group (8 recommended)
  • 16GB of Memory (8GB for approved small installations)
  • For development and testing environments burst compute nodes can be used for cost optimization
  • For production environments dedicated-compute or compute-optimized (AWS c5.* series) nodes are highly recommended
  • IP, Storage, and LoadBalancer provisioning must already be setup in Kubernetes
  • A default storage provider must already exist in the cluster. CSI-enabled storage is required for automated backups or volume resizing to be used. See notes below on storage setup.
  • A dedicated Kubernetes cluster is recommended. NetFoundry On-Prem cannot be installed on a cluster that already has cert-manager installed.

Small Footprint Installs (Ziti Components Only)​

  • A single node Kubernetes cluster running k3s (preferred), or MicroK8s
  • 4 CPU Cores
  • 8 GB of Memory
  • A default storage provider must already exist in the cluster. See notes below if this is not setup.

IP provisioning for small footprint installs depends on the choice of Kubernetes and the hardware it is running on. Example: MicroK8s requires the metallb when running on Raspberry Pi4 and a range of available DHCP addresses must be specified.

Storage Setup For Production Use​

CSI-enabled storage provides several modern features for Kubernetes storage and enables the use of volume resizing, storage snapshots, and automated backups. Storage drivers depend on your Kubernetes provider. See a full list of vendor maintained drivers here.

If NetFoundry On-Prem is being installed on an existing EKS cluster, the following script can be run to initialize the ebs.csi.aws.com driver with the desired settings:

./installers/setup_eks_storage.sh