System requirements
Ensure you review the requirements outlined in this document before deploying NetScaler BLX.
Supported Linux distributions
| Linux distribution | NetScaler BLX 14.1 | NetScaler BLX 13.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.x | Yes | Yes |
| RHEL 8.x | Yes | Yes |
| RHEL 7.5 to 7.9 | Yes | Yes |
| Oracle Linux 8.x | Yes | Yes |
| Oracle Linux 7.5 to 7.9 | Yes | Yes |
| Ubuntu 22.04 | Yes (Build 12.30 or later) | No |
| Ubuntu 20.04 | Yes | Yes |
| Ubuntu 18.04 | Yes | Yes |
| Oracle cloud Linux on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) | Yes | Yes |
| Amazon Linux 2 | Yes | Yes |
Note:
On OCI, BLX with DPDK is not supported. You can run BLX in a dedicated mode without DPDK support.
On Amazon Linux, BLX with DPDK is supported only with an Elastic Network Adapter (ENA).
Hardware requirements of Linux host
| Category | NetScaler BLX with DPDK support | NetScaler BLX |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Intel or AMD x86-64 (64-bit) processor | Intel or AMD x86-64 (64-bit) processor |
| Minimum RAM | 2 GB | 2 GB |
|
Drivers
|
Amazon EC2 Elastic Network Adapter ports: ena
|
All Linux supported drivers
|
Google Cloud Platform: gVNIC, virtIO
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Intel ports: igb, ixgbe, and i40e
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KVM Paravirtualized driver: virtIO
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Mellanox ConnectX-4 ports: mlx5_core
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Mellanox ConnectX-5 ports: mlx5_core
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Mellanox ConnectX-6 ports: mlx5_core
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VMware vitualization platform network adaptor ports: vmxnet3
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Note:
- BLX supports a maximum of nine NIC ports (DPDK NIC ports, non-DPDK NIC ports, or a combination of both).
- The Linux host must meet the minimum system requirements for installing DPDK. For more information about the minimum requirements of DPDK, see the Official DPDK Documentation.
- Starting from NetScaler release 14.1 build 43.x, BLX supports IPv6 in the DPDK mode. The supported drivers are: virtio_net, i40e, ixgb, igb, af_packet, vmxnet, and mlx5_core (for physical NIC).
Open source packages
The following dependencies are required on the Linux host.
- Auto-installed dependencies
- Manually installed dependencies
Auto-installed dependencies
When you install BLX, the following dependencies are automatically installed on the Linux host from the standard public repository.
| RPM-based Linux host | Debian-based Linux host |
|---|---|
crontabs |
build-essential:amd64 |
ethtool |
coreutils |
gcc |
cpanminus:amd64 |
glibc(x86-32) (version 2.17 or later) |
cron:amd64 |
glibc(x86-64) (version 2.17–196 or later) |
ethtool |
Requbsd |
gcc:amd64 |
ibdb(x86-64) (version 5.3–21 or later) |
lib32gcc1:amd64 (version 4.9 or later) |
libgcc(x86-32) (version4.8.5 or later) |
lib32stdc++6:amd64 (version 4.8.4 or later) |
libstdc++(x86-32) (version 4.8.5 or later) |
lib32z1:amd64 (version 1.2.8 or later) |
libstdc++(x86-64) (version 4.8.5 or later) |
libbsd0 (version 0.8.2 or later) |
make |
libc6 (version 2.17 or later) |
openssl-devel |
libc6:amd64 (version 2.19 or later) |
pciutils |
libc6:i386 (version 2.19 or later) |
perl |
libc6-i386:amd64 (version 2.19 or later) |
perl-App-cpanminus |
libdb5.3:amd64 (version 5.3.28 or later) |
perl-core |
libhttp-message-perl:amd64 |
perl-CPAN |
libio-socket-ssl-perl:amd64 |
perl-IO-Socket-SSL |
liblwp-protocol-https-perl:amd64 |
perl-libwww-perl |
libnuma1 (version 2.0.11 or later) |
perl-LWP-Protocol-https |
libssl-dev:amd64 |
perl-Sys-Syslog(x86-64) (version 0.33 or later) |
libstdc++6 (version 4.8.5 or later) |
perl(x86-64) (version 5.16.3 or later) |
libswitch-perl:amd64 |
perl-XML-Writer |
libwww-perl:amd64 |
ping |
libxml-parser-lite-perl:amd64 |
procps-ng |
libxml-writer-perl:amd64 |
python3 |
perl:amd64 (version 5.16.3 or later) |
rsyslog |
iputils-ping |
sqlite-devel(x86-64) (version 3.7.17 or later) |
python3 |
systemd |
rsyslog |
tcpdump(x86-64) (version 4.9.2 or later) |
sqlite3:amd64 (version 3.11.0 or later) |
zlib(x86-32) (version 1.2.7 or later) |
systemd |
tcpdump:amd64 (version 4.9.2 or later) |
Manually installed dependencies
The following dependencies must be installed manually on the Linux host from the standard public repository.
-
For RPM-based Linux systems, install Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) repository
For information about installing the EPEL repository, see EPEL.
-
For Debian based Linux systems running Ubuntu version 18 or later, install
libc6:i386repositoryRun the following commands on the Linux shell to install the package:
dpkg --add-architecture i386apt updateapt install libc6:i386
-
For Amazon Linux 2 on AWS, install EPEL repository
Run the following three commands on the Amazon Linux 2 shell to install EPEL repository:
amazon-linux-extras install epel -yyum-config-manager --enable epelyum update
For more information about installing the EPEL repository, see the AWS official documentation.