Hardware requirements

Before you install IBM Cloud Pak® for Data, review the hardware requirements for the control plane, the shared cluster components, and the services that you plan to install.

Components Related links
Cloud Pak for Data platform hardware requirements Review the minimum requirements for a stable installation based on the license that you purchased.
Work with your IBM Sales representative to determine whether you need more resources based on:
  • The shared cluster components that you need to install.
  • The services that you plan to install.
  • The types of workloads that you plan to run.
In addition, review the following resources:
Shared cluster-wide components Review the hardware requirements for the shared cluster components that you need to install.
Instance-level prerequisites Review the hardware requirements for the instance-level prerequisites.
Services Review the hardware requirements for the services that you plan to install.

Not all services are supported on all hardware.
Automatically installed dependencies Review the hardware requirements for the automatically installed dependencies, such as the common core services. (These components are installed only if you install a service with a dependency on the component.)

Cloud Pak for Data platform hardware requirements

You must install Cloud Pak for Data on a Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform cluster. For information about the supported versions of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, see Software requirements.

It is strongly recommended that you deploy Cloud Pak for Data on a highly available cluster.

The hardware requirements depend on the Cloud Pak for Data license that you purchased.

Requirements for Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition
Use this information if you purchased one of the following licenses.
  • Cloud Pak for Data Enterprise Edition
  • Cloud Pak for Data Standard Edition
Sizing your cluster

The following requirements are the minimum recommendations for a small, stable deployment of Cloud Pak for Data. Use the minimum recommended configuration as a starting point for your cluster configuration. If you use fewer resources, you are likely to encounter stability problems.

Important: Work with your IBM® Sales representative to size your cluster.

The size of your cluster depends on multiple factors.

  • The shared components that you need to install.
  • The services that you plan to install.

    The sizing requirements for services are available in Services. If you install only a few services with small vCPU and memory requirements, you might not need additional resources. However, if you plan to install multiple services or services with large footprints, add the appropriate amount of vCPU and memory to the minimum recommendations.

  • The types of workloads that you plan to run.

    For example, if you plan to run complex analytics workloads in addition to other resource-intensive workloads, such as ETL jobs, you can expect reduced concurrency levels if you don't add additional computing power to your cluster.

    Because workloads vary based on several factors, use measurements from running real workloads with realistic data to size your cluster.

For additional information on sizing your cluster, download the component scaling guidance PDF.

Choosing a configuration

The following configuration has been tested and validated by IBM. However, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform supports other configurations. If the configuration in the following table does not work in your environment, you can adapt the configuration based on the guidance in the Red Hat OpenShift documentation.

Node role Hardware Number of servers Minimum available vCPU Minimum memory Minimum storage
Control plane
  • x86-64
  • ppc64le
  • s390x (z14 or later)
 3 (for high availability)

4 vCPU per node

(This configuration supports up to 24 worker nodes.)

 16 GB RAM per node

(This configuration supports up to 24 worker nodes.)

No additional storage is needed for Cloud Pak for Data.

See the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform documentation for sizing guidance.
Infra
  • x86-64
  • ppc64le
  • s390x (z14 or later)
 3 (recommended) 4 vCPU per node

(This configuration supports up to 27 worker nodes.)

 24 GB RAM per node

(This configuration supports up to 27 worker nodes.)

 See the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform documentation for sizing guidance.
Worker (compute)
  • x86-64
  • ppc64le
  • s390x (z14 or later)
 3 or more worker (compute) nodes 16 vCPU per node
  • 64 GB RAM per node (minimum)
  • 128 GB RAM per node (recommended)
 300 GB of storage space per node for storing container images locally.

If you plan to install the watsonx.ai service, increase the storage to 500 GB per node.

See Cloud Pak for Data platform storage requirements for details.
Load balancer
  • x86-64
  • ppc64le
  • s390x (z14 or later)

2 load balancer nodes

(For development, test, or proof-of-concept clusters, you can use 1 load balancer node.)

 2 vCPU per node

4 GB RAM per node

Add another 4 GB of RAM for access restrictions and security control.

Add 100 GB of root storage for access restrictions and security control.

A load balancer is required when using three control plane nodes. The load balancer can either be in the cluster or external to the cluster. However, in a production-level cluster, an enterprise-grade external load balancer is recommended.
Additional guidance for Power® hardware

The Cloud Pak for Data control plane supports POWER9™ and POWER10.

To improve performance, it is recommended that you configure POWER9 logical partitions to run POWER9 compatibility mode, and that you configure POWER10 logical partitions to run POWER10 compatibility mode.

Not all services support Power. For more information, see Services.

On Power hardware, the maximum supported configuration for each worker node is shown as follows.

  • 220 vCPU
  • 824 GB RAM
Additional guidance for s390x hardware

Not all services support s390x. For more information, see Services.

Requirements for Express licenses
Use the information in this section if you purchased one of the following licenses.
  • Data Governance Express®
  • Data Science and ML Ops Express
  • ELT Pushdown Express
Sizing your cluster

The following requirements are the minimum recommendations for a small, stable deployment of Cloud Pak for Data. Use the minimum recommended configuration as a starting point for your cluster configuration. If you use fewer resources, you are likely to encounter stability problems.

Important: Work with your IBM Sales representative to size your cluster.

The size of your cluster depends on multiple factors.

  • The shared components that you need to install.
  • The services that you plan to install.

    The services that you can install depend on the license that you purchased. The sizing requirements for services are available in Services.

  • The types of workloads that you plan to run.

    For example, if you plan to run complex analytics workloads in addition to other resource-intensive workloads, you can expect reduced concurrency levels if you don't add additional computing power to your cluster.

    Because workloads vary based on several of factors, use measurements from running real workloads with realistic data to size your cluster.

For more information on sizing your cluster, download the component scaling guidance PDF.

Choosing a configuration

The following configuration has been tested and validated by IBM. However, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform supports other configurations. If the configuration in the following table does not work in your environment, you can adapt the configuration based on the guidance in the Red Hat OpenShift documentation.

Node role Hardware Number of servers Minimum available vCPU Minimum memory Minimum storage
Control plane
  • x86-64
  • ppc64le
  • s390x (z14 or later)
 3 (for high availability)

4 vCPU per node

(This configuration supports up to 24 worker nodes.)

 16 GB RAM per node

(This configuration supports up to 24 worker nodes.)

No additional storage is needed for Cloud Pak for Data.

See the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform documentation for sizing guidance.
Infra
  • x86-64
  • ppc64le
  • s390x (z14 or later)
 3 (recommended) 4 vCPU per node

(This configuration supports up to 27 worker nodes.)

 24 GB RAM per node

(This configuration supports up to 27 worker nodes.)

 See the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform documentation for sizing guidance.
Worker (compute)
  • x86-64
  • ppc64le
  • s390x (z14 or later)
 2 or more worker (compute) nodes 16 vCPU per node
  • 64 GB RAM per node (minimum)
  • 128 GB RAM per node (recommended)
 300 GB of storage space per node for storing container images locally. See Cloud Pak for Data platform storage requirements for details.
Load balancer
  • x86-64
  • ppc64le
  • s390x (z14 or later)

2 load balancer nodes

(For development, test, or proof-of-concept clusters, you can use 1 load balancer node.)

2 vCPU per node

4 GB RAM per node

Add another 4 GB of RAM for access restrictions and security control.

Add 100 GB of root storage for access restrictions and security control.

A load balancer is required when using three control plane nodes. The load balancer can either be in the cluster or external to the cluster. However, in a production-level cluster, an enterprise-grade external load balancer is recommended.
Additional guidance for Power hardware

The Cloud Pak for Data control plane supports POWER9 and POWER10.

To improve performance, it is recommended that you configure POWER9 logical partitions to run POWER9 compatibility mode, and that you configure POWER10 logical partitions to run POWER10 compatibility mode.

Not all services support Power. For more information, see Services.

On Power hardware, the maximum supported configuration for each worker node is shown as follows.

  • 220 vCPU
  • 824 GB RAM
Additional guidance for s390x hardware

Not all services support s390x. For more information, see Services.

Cluster node settings

The time on all of the nodes must be synchronized within 500 ms.

Some services require additional node settings to run correctly. For information about the node settings and the services that require them, see Changing required node settings. You must change the node settings before you install Cloud Pak for Data.

Disk requirements

To prepare your storage disks, ensure that you have good I/O performance, and prepare the disks for encryption.

I/O performance
When I/O performance is not sufficient, services can experience poor performance or cluster instability, such as functional failures with timeouts. This is especially true when you are running a heavy workload.
To assess your I/O performance:
  1. Run the Cloud Pak for Data storage performance validation playbook on the cluster where you plan to install Cloud Pak for Data and compare your results with the recommendations.

    The I/O performance requirements for Cloud Pak for Data are based on extensive testing in various cloud environments. The tests validate the I/O performance in these environments. The requirements are based on the performance of writing data to representative storage classes using the following block size and thread count combinations.

    • To evaluate disk latency, the I/O tests use a small block (4 KB) with 8 threads.
    • To evaluate disk throughput, the I/O tests use a large block (1 GB) with 2 threads.

    Ensure that the results of the storage performance validation playbook are comparable to the following recommended minimum values.

    Disk latency (4 KB block with 8 threads)
    For disk latency tests, 11 MB/s has been found to provide sufficient performance.
    Disk throughput (1 GB block with 2 thread)
    For disk throughput tests, 128 MB/s has been found to provide sufficient performance.

    To ensure sufficient performance, both requirements should be satisfied; however, this might not be feasible in all environments.

    Some storage types might have more stringent I/O requirements. For details, see Storage considerations.

    Important: It is recommended that you run the validation playbook several times to account for variations in workloads, access patterns, and network traffic.

    In addition, if your storage volumes are remote, network speed can be a key factor in your I/O performance. For good I/O performance, ensure that you have sufficient network speed, as described in Storage considerations.

  2. Complete a proof of concept with representative workloads.
    If your proof of concept encounters functional issues or performance issues, determine the root cause of the problem to confirm whether the issue is related to I/O performance. You can use the following best practices to help identify potential problems.
As you assess your I/O performance, apply the following information.
  • Workloads can vary dramatically in terms of complexity and concurrency.
  • As your workload increases, you are more likely to require better I/O performance to avoid performance problems.
  • If you are unable to satisfy the recommended I/O performance requirements, you run an increased risk of encountering performance problems.
Encryption with Linux® Unified Key Setup (LUKS2)
To ensure that your data within Cloud Pak for Data is stored securely, you can encrypt your disks when you install Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. For more information, see Encrypting and mirroring disks during installation in the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform documentation:

Shared cluster-wide components

Shared cluster components provide underlying functionality for the IBM Cloud Pak for Data control plane and services. Use the following sections to understand the hardware requirements for the following components.

  • IBM Certificate manager
  • License Service
  • Scheduling service

For more information, see Cluster-wide components.

Use the following information to determine whether you have the minimum required resources to install each component on your cluster.

x86-64 hardware
Software vCPU Memory Storage Notes
IBM Certificate manager 1.6 vCPU 1.94 GB RAM This information is not currently available. A certificate manager is required.

This software is installed once on the cluster. For more information, see Cluster-wide components.

Review the Hardware requirements and recommendations for foundational services in the IBM Cloud Pak foundational services documentation for updates to the hardware requirements:
License Service 3.1 vCPU .735 GB RAM This information is not currently available. Required.

This software is installed once on the cluster. For more information, see Cluster-wide components.

Review the Hardware requirements and recommendations for foundational services in the IBM Cloud Pak foundational services documentation for updates to the hardware requirements:
Scheduling service
Operator pods:
0.5 - 1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
0.6 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.54 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
1.9 - 5.7 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Not applicable

Ephemeral storage:
0.9 GB

Image storage:
Up to 2.13 GB
 Required in some situations, but generally recommended.

This software is installed once on the cluster. For more information, see Cluster-wide components.

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.
Power (ppc64le) hardware
Software vCPU Memory Storage Notes
IBM Certificate manager 1.6 vCPU 1.94 GB RAM This information is not currently available. A certificate manager is required.

This software is installed once on the cluster. For more information, see Cluster-wide components.

Review the Hardware requirements and recommendations for foundational services in the IBM Cloud Pak foundational services documentation for updates to the hardware requirements:
License Service 3.1 vCPU .735 GB RAM This information is not currently available. Required.

This software is installed once on the cluster. For more information, see Cluster-wide components.

Review the Hardware requirements and recommendations for foundational services in the IBM Cloud Pak foundational services documentation for updates to the hardware requirements:
Scheduling service
Operator pods:
0.5 - 1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
0.6 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.54 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
1.9 - 5.7 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Not applicable

Ephemeral storage:
0.9 GB

Image storage:
Up to 2.13 GB
 Required in some situations, but generally recommended.

This software is installed once on the cluster. For more information, see Cluster-wide components.

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.
Z (s390x) hardware
Software vCPU Memory Storage Notes
IBM Certificate manager 1.6 vCPU 1.94 GB RAM This information is not currently available. A certificate manager is required.

This software is installed once on the cluster. For more information, see Cluster-wide components.

Review the Hardware requirements and recommendations for foundational services in the IBM Cloud Pak foundational services documentation for updates to the hardware requirements:
License Service 3.1 vCPU .735 GB RAM This information is not currently available. Required.

This software is installed once on the cluster. For more information, see Cluster-wide components.

Review the Hardware requirements and recommendations for foundational services in the IBM Cloud Pak foundational services documentation for updates to the hardware requirements:

Instance-level prerequisites

Instance-level prerequisites provide underlying functionality for services. Use the following sections to understand the hardware requirements for:

  • IBM Cloud Pak for Data control plane
  • IBM Cloud Pak foundational services

For more information, see Instance-level components.

Use the following information to determine whether you have the minimum required resources to install each component on your cluster.

x86-64 hardware
Software vCPU Memory Storage Notes
IBM Cloud Pak for Data control plane The requirements for the control plane are included in the Cloud Pak for Data platform hardware requirements The requirements for the control plane are included in the Cloud Pak for Data platform hardware requirements The requirements for the control plane are included in the Cloud Pak for Data platform hardware requirements

Required.

The control plane is installed once for each instance of Cloud Pak for Data on the cluster.
IBM Cloud Pak foundational services 4 vCPU 5 GB RAM
See the Hardware requirements and recommendations for foundational services in the IBM Cloud Pak foundational services documentation:

Required.

The IBM Cloud Pak foundational services are installed once for each instance of Cloud Pak for Data on the cluster.
Power (ppc64le) hardware
Software vCPU Memory Storage Notes
IBM Cloud Pak for Data control plane The requirements for the control plane are included in the Cloud Pak for Data platform hardware requirements The requirements for the control plane are included in the Cloud Pak for Data platform hardware requirements The requirements for the control plane are included in the Cloud Pak for Data platform hardware requirements

Required.

The control plane is installed once for each instance of Cloud Pak for Data on the cluster.
IBM Cloud Pak foundational services 3 vCPU 5 GB RAM
See the Hardware requirements and recommendations for foundational services in the IBM Cloud Pak foundational services documentation:

Required.

The IBM Cloud Pak foundational services are installed once for each instance of Cloud Pak for Data on the cluster.
Z (s390x) hardware
Software vCPU Memory Storage Notes
IBM Cloud Pak for Data control plane The requirements for the control plane are included in the Cloud Pak for Data platform hardware requirements The requirements for the control plane are included in the Cloud Pak for Data platform hardware requirements The requirements for the control plane are included in the Cloud Pak for Data platform hardware requirements

Required.

The control plane is installed once for each instance of Cloud Pak for Data on the cluster.
IBM Cloud Pak foundational services 3 vCPU 5 GB RAM
See the Hardware requirements and recommendations for foundational services in the IBM Cloud Pak foundational services documentation:

Required.

The IBM Cloud Pak foundational services are installed once for each instance of Cloud Pak for Data on the cluster.

Services

Use the following information to determine whether you have the minimum required resources to install each service that you want to use.

x86-64 hardware
Software vCPU Memory Storage Notes
AI Factsheets
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
0.3 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
1.2 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Uses the persistent storage provisioned by the common core services.

Ephemeral storage:
300 GB

Image storage:
Up to 2.27 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.
Anaconda Repository for IBM Cloud Pak for Data

4 vCPU

 8 GB RAM 1 TB This service cannot be installed on your Red Hat OpenShift cluster. For details, see the Anaconda installation requirements.
Analytics Engine powered by Apache Spark
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
2.3 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
9 GB RAM
Persistent storage:This information is not currently available.

Ephemeral storage:
50 GB per vCPU request
(SSDs are recommended)

Image storage:
Up to 22.43 GB
 Spark jobs use emptyDir volumes for temporary storage and shuffling. If your Spark jobs use a lot of disk space for temporary storage or shuffling, make sure that you have sufficient space on the local disk where emptyDir volumes are created.
The recommended location is a partition in /var/lib. For more information, see Understanding ephemeral storagein the Red Hat OpenShift documentation:

If you don't have sufficient space on the local disk, Spark jobs might run slowly and some of the executors might evict jobs. A minimum of 50 GB of temporary storage for each vCPU request is recommended.

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

All of the Analytics Engine powered by Apache Spark service instances associated with an instance of Cloud Pak for Data use the same pool of resources.
Cognos® Analytics
Operator pods:
0.5 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
10 vCPU
Operator pods:
1 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
40 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
  • 500 MB for the service
  • 2 GB per instance (smallest instance)
Ephemeral storage:
  • 1 GB for the service
  • 23.6 GB per instance (smallest instance)

Image storage:
Up to 26.38 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

When you provision the Cognos Analytics service, you specify the size of the instance.

The information here is for the smallest instance. For other sizes, see Provisioning the Cognos Analytics service.
Cognos Dashboards
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.5 vCPU

Operand:
11 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Operand:
36 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
30 GB

Ephemeral storage:
37.4 GB

Image storage:
Up to 13.62 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.
Data Privacy
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0..01 vCPU

Operand:
1 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
3.77 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Uses the persistent storage provisioned by IBM Knowledge Catalog.

Ephemeral storage:
4.5 GB

Image storage:
Up to 3.03 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
Data Refinery
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.5 vCPU

Operand:
1 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
1 GB RAM

Operand:
4 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Uses the persistent storage provisioned by the common core services.

Ephemeral storage:
2 GB

Image storage:
Up to 4.15 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

This service is installed when you install IBM Knowledge Catalog or Watson™ Studio
Data Replication
Operator pods:
0.5 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
13 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.512 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
14 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
10 GB - 512 GB

Ephemeral storage:
22 GB

Image storage:
Up to 4.03 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
DataStage®
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
8 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
31 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
300 GB

Ephemeral storage:This information is not currently available.

Image storage:
Up to 19.04 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

Local storage in /var/lib/containers
Adjust the amount of local storage per node based on the volume of data you are analyzing. Local storage should be approximately 2 times larger than the amount of data you expect the system to process concurrently.
Db2®
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
8 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
24 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
540 GB (assuming defaults)

Ephemeral storage:
2.2 - 9.7 GB

Image storage:
Up to 2.59 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

A dedicated node is recommended for production deployments of Db2. For details, see Setting up dedicated nodes.
Db2 Big SQL
Operator pods:
0.2 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.1 vCPU

Operand:
10.2 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.3 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.2 GB RAM

Operand:
66.7 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
470 GB total (assuming defaults)
  • Head pod:

    200 GB (default)

  • One worker pod:

    200 GB (default)

  • Scheduling pod:

    10 GB

  • Log storage:

    30 GB per pod


Ephemeral storage:
1.4 - 12.2 GB

Image storage:
Up to 0.69 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

When you provision the service, you can specify:

  • The resources (vCPU and RAM) for the head and worker pods
  • The number of worker pods
  • The size of the persistent volume for the head pod and worker pods
Db2 Data Gate
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
2 vCPU per instance
Operator pods:
0.1 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
13 GB RAM per instance
Persistent storage:
50 GB per instance

Ephemeral storage:
0.6 - 3.25 GB

Image storage:
Up to 9.88 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
Db2 Data Management Console
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
5 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
19.31 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
10 GB

Ephemeral storage:
7.5 GB

Image storage:
Up to 7.39 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

For information on sizing the provisioned instance, see Creating a service instance for Db2 Data Management Console from the web client.
Db2 Warehouse
Operator pods:
0.5 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
SMP: 7 vCPU
MPP: 39 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
SMP: 98 GB RAM
MPP: 610 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
540 GB (assuming defaults)

Ephemeral storage:
2.2 - 10.8 GB

Image storage:
Up to 0.83 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Use dedicated nodes for:

  • Production SMP deployments (recommended)
  • MPP deployments (required)

For detail, see Setting up dedicated nodes.

Development deployment
  • 1 node for SMP
  • 2 nodes for MPP
Production deployment
  • 1 node for SMP
  • 2-999 nodes for MPP
Recommended configuration

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
Decision Optimization
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
0.9 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
1.5 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
12 GB

Ephemeral storage:
300 - 6500 MB

Image storage:
Up to 3.39 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
EDB Postgres
Operator pods:
IBM: 0.1 vCPU
Third-party: 0.5 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
User-defined
Operator pods:
IBM: 0.256 GB RAM
Third-party: 0.2 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
User-defined
Persistent storage:
100 GB

Ephemeral storage:This information is not currently available.

Image storage:
Up to 2.60 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
Execution Engine for Apache Hadoop
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
For each deployment:
0.5 vCPU +  (0.5 vCPU * number of Hadoop registrations) + (0.6 vCPU * number of Hadoop jobs run)
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
For each deployment:
0.5 GB + (0.5 GB * number of Hadoop registrations) + (0.5 GB * number of Hadoop jobs run)
Persistent storage:
2 GB per image pushed

Ephemeral storage:
218 - 436 MB

Image storage:
Up to 2.46 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

Each image that is pushed to the remote Hadoop cluster requires disk space where image tgz file can be stored.

Execution Engine for Apache Hadoop requires an Execution Engine for Hadoop RPM installation on the Apache Hadoop cluster. For details, see Installing the service on Apache Hadoop clusters.
IBM Knowledge Catalog
Base
Operator pods:
0.75 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.05 vCPU

Operand:
26 vCPU
Data quality
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
11 vCPU
Semantic search and lineage
Operator pods:
1.5 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.05 vCPU

Operand:
5 vCPU
Base
Operator pods:
4 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.2 GB RAM

Operand:
128 GB RAM
Data Quality
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
44 GB RAM
Semantic search and lineage
Operator pods:
0.7 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
20 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
900 GB

Ephemeral storage:
Base
840 MB - 19.4 GB
Data quality
105 MB - 2.15 GB
Semantic search and lineage
210 MB - 2.53 GB


Image storage:
Up to 15.57 GB with all optional components

The minimum required resources depend on the features that you install.

If Data Refinery is not installed, add the vCPU and memory required for Data Refinery to the information listed for IBM Knowledge Catalog.

Local storage in /var/lib/containers
Adjust the amount of local storage per node based on the volume of data you are analyzing. Local storage should be approximately 2 times larger than the amount of data you expect the system to process concurrently.
Persistent storage
The raw size of shared storage depends on the storage class you use. For example, if you use portworx-shared-gp3, which has 3 replicas, multiply the storage by the number of replicas.
IBM Match 360 with Watson
Operator pods:
2 vCPU

Catalog pods:
1 vCPU

Operand:
28 vCPU
Operator pods:
2 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
2 GB RAM

Operand:
97 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
190 GB

Ephemeral storage:
16 GB

Image storage:
Up to 16.76 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
Informix®
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.1 vCPU

Operand:
2 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
2 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
20 GB

Ephemeral storage:
900 MB (default)

Image storage:
Up to 5.65 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.
MANTA Automated Data Lineage
Operator pods:
0.5 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
11 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.5 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
26 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
37 GB

Ephemeral storage:
5 GB

Image storage:
Up to 5.64 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
MongoDB
Operator pods:
IBM: 0.1 vCPU
Third-party: 0.5 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
User-defined
Operator pods:
IBM: 0.256 GB RAM
Third-party: 0.2 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
User-defined
Persistent storage:
100 GB

Ephemeral storage:
0.256 GB

Image storage:
Up to 2.35 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Dedicated nodes are recommended. For details, see Setting up dedicated nodes.

Development deployment
3 nodes
Production deployment
3 nodes
Recommended configuration
Refer to the Ops Manager System Requirements to determine the appropriate specifications based on your expected workloads.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
OpenPages®
Operator pods:
0.5 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:  
6 vCPU
Operator pods:
2 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
20 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
252 GB

Ephemeral storage:
10.9 GB

Image storage:
Up to 4.29 GB
 When you provision the OpenPages service, you specify the size of the instance and the storage class to use. You also specify whether to use the database that is provided with the OpenPages service or a database that is on an external server.

These values represent the minimum resources for OpenPages with a Db2 database on Cloud Pak for Data.

Using a Db2 database on Cloud Pak for Data

OpenPages uses Db2 as a service, which is different from the Db2 service in the services catalog.

You can optionally provision the Db2 database on dedicated nodes. For details, see Provisioning an instance of OpenPages.

Using a Db2 database outside of Cloud Pak for Data
If you use a database outside of Cloud Pak for Data, the minimum requirements for vCPUs and memory are lower.
Planning Analytics
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
16 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
28 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
20 GB

Ephemeral storage: 50 GB (maximum)

Image storage:
Up to 26.58 GB

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

Select the size of your instance when you provision Planning Analytics. For details, see Provisioning the Planning Analytics service.
Product Master
Operator pods:
0.3 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.2 vCPU

Operand:
16 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.5 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
34 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
200 GB

Ephemeral storage:
22 GB

Image storage:
Up to 18.03 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
RStudio® Server Runtimes
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
1 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
8.8 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Uses the persistent storage provisioned by the common core services.

Ephemeral storage:This information is not currently available.

Image storage:
Up to 26.61 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
SPSS® Modeler
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
0.25 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
1 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Uses the persistent storage provisioned by the common core services.

Ephemeral storage:
3 GB (maximum)

Image storage:
Up to 8.67 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
Synthetic Data Generator
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
10.15 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
42.5 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Uses the persistent storage provisioned by the common core services.

Ephemeral storage:
100 GB

Image storage:
Up to 5.40 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
Voice Gateway
Operator pods:
0.2 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
2 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
8 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Not applicable

Ephemeral storage:
4 GB

Image storage:
4 GB

Minimum resources for a system that can provide voice-only support for up to 11 concurrent calls.

Dedicated nodes are recommended for production environments.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
Watson Discovery
Operator pods:
0.05 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
15 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.1 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
88 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
  • 237 GB file storage
  • 363 GB block storage
  • 215 GB Multicloud Object Gateway storage


Ephemeral storage:
128 GB

Image storage:
Up to 95.21 GB
 Starter deployments are sized for demonstration purposes only. Production deployments are sized for robust use. Be sure to choose the right size for your needs. You cannot change the deployment type after you install the service. If you need to change it later, you must reinstall. These values represent the minimum requirements for a Starter deployment.

CPUs must support the AVX2 instruction set.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

All of the Watson Discovery service instances associated with an instance of Cloud Pak for Data use the same pool of resources.

Watson Discovery supports only single-zone OpenShift deployments. You cannot install Watson Discovery on a multi-zone deployment.
Watson Machine Learning
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
6 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.5 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.5 GB RAM

Operand:
27 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
150 GB

Ephemeral storage:This information is not currently available.

Image storage:
Up to 104.02 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

AVX2 is recommended but not required for AutoAI experiments.
Watson Machine Learning Accelerator
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
5 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
13 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
73 GB

Ephemeral storage:
2 GB

Image storage:
Up to 28.0 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

GPU support is limited to NVIDIA V100, A100 and T4 GPUs.
Watson OpenScale
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
12.75 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
68 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
100 GB

Ephemeral storage:
13.5 GB

Image storage:
Up to 20.64 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
Watson Pipelines
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
1.4 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
2.625 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Uses the persistent storage provisioned by the common core services.

Ephemeral storage:
1.3 GB

Image storage:
Up to 4.50 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
Watson Query
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
12 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
38 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
280 GB total (assuming defaults)
  • Head pod:

    50 GB (default)

  • One worker pod:

    50 GB (default)

  • Caching storage:

    100 GB (default)

  • Caching metadata:

    10 GB

  • Scheduling pod:

    10 GB

  • Log storage:

    30 GB per pod


Ephemeral storage:
2.428 - 13GB

Image storage:
Up to 2.90 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

When you provision the service, you can specify:

  • The size of the persistent volume for the head pod
  • The size of the persistent volume for the cache
  • The number of worker pods
  • The size of the persistent volume for the worker pods
Watson Speech services
Operator pods:
0.3 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
Speech to Text: 9 vCPU
Text to Speech: 6.5 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.3 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
Speech to Text: 45.3 GB RAM
Text to Speech: 15.5 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
  • 900 GB
  • 20 GB Multicloud Object Gateway storage


Ephemeral storage:
27 GB

Image storage:
Up to 78.52 GB

Minimum resources for an instance with a single replica per service using the default models and voices (US-English). The amount of vCPU, memory, and ephemeral storage that is required increases when you install additional models.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

CPUs must support the AVX2 instruction set.

All of the Watson Speech services service instances associated with an instance of Cloud Pak for Data use the same pool of resources.
Watson Studio
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
2 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
8.8 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Uses the persistent storage provisioned by the common core services. Additional storage is required if you enable Visual Studio Code support.

Ephemeral storage:
5 - 10 GB

Image storage:
Up to 6.16 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

If Data Refinery is not installed, add the vCPU and memory required for Data Refinery to the information listed for Watson Studio.

If you enable the Visual Studio Code extension for Watson Studio, you must allocate a minimum of 500-600 MB of storage per user for installed extensions. For details, see To enable Visual Studio Code in Post-installation tasks for the Watson Studio service.
Watson Studio Runtimes
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
Dictated by the runtimes
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
Dictated by the runtimes
Persistent storage:
Uses the persistent storage provisioned by the common core services.

Ephemeral storage:
Dictated by the runtimes.

Image storage:
Up to 148.77 GB
 Runtimes use on-demand vCPU and memory.
Watson Studio Runtimes includes the following runtimes:
  • Runtime 23.1 on Python 3.10
  • Runtime 22.2 on Python 3.10
  • Runtime 23.1 on Python 3.10 for GPU
  • Runtime 22.2 on Python 3.10 for GPU
  • Runtime 23.1 on R 4.2
  • Runtime 22.2 on R 4.2

The following runtimes have additional hardware requirements:

Runtime 23.1 on Python 3.10 for GPU
At least 1 GPU core is required to use this runtime.
Runtime 22.2 on Python 3.10 for GPU
At least 1 GPU core is required to use this runtime.
watsonx Assistant
Operator pods:
0.25 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
10 vCPU
Operator pods:
6 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
110 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
  • 325 GB - 1340 GB

    Only OpenShift Data Foundation and IBM Storage Fusion Data Foundation require 1340 GB of storage. All other storage types require 325 GB.

  • 100 GB Multicloud Object Gateway storage


Ephemeral storage:
30 - 135 GB

Image storage:
Up to 37.88 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

All of the watsonx Assistant service instances associated with an instance of Cloud Pak for Data use the same pool of resources.

Your hardware must meet the following additional requirements:
  • CPUs must have a clock speed of 2.4 GHz or higher
  • CPUs must support Linux SSE 4.2
  • CPUs must support the AVX2 instruction set
watsonx.ai
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
27 vCPU
Operator pods:
1 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
665 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Varies based on the foundation models that you plan to install. For more information, see Adding foundation models.

Ephemeral storage:
Varies based on the foundation models that you plan to install. For more information, see Adding foundation models.

Image storage:
Up to 582.28 GB with all models

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

GPU support is limited to:
  • NVIDIA A100 or H100 GPUs with 80 GB RAM
  • NVIDIA L40S GPUs with 48 GB RAM
Important: The Multi-Instance GPU (MIG) feature of the NVIDIA GPU must be disabled.

For more information about GPU requirements for foundation models, see Adding foundation models.
watsonx.data
Operator pods:
0.5 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
19 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.75 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
40.24 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
542 GB

Ephemeral storage:
25 GB

Image storage:
Up to 16.88 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica of the Presto engine.

If you increase the number of Presto replicas, you need additional vCPU, memory, and ephemeral storage.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
watsonx.governance
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU
  • AI Factsheets: 0.1 vCPU
  • OpenPages: 0.5 vCPU
  • Watson OpenScale: 0.1 vCPU
Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU
  • AI Factsheets: 0.01 vCPU
  • OpenPages: 0.01 vCPU
  • Watson OpenScale: 0.01 vCPU
Operand:
  • AI Factsheets: 0.3 vCPU
  • OpenPages: 6 vCPU
  • Watson OpenScale: 12.75 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM
  • AI Factsheets: 0.256 GB RAM
  • OpenPages: 2 GB RAM
  • Watson OpenScale: 0.256 GB RAM
Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM
  • AI Factsheets: 0.05 GB RAM
  • OpenPages: 0.05 GB RAM
  • Watson OpenScale: 0.05 GB RAM
Operand:
  • AI Factsheets: 1.2 GB RAM
  • OpenPages: 20 GB RAM
  • Watson OpenScale: 68 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
  • AI Factsheets: Uses the persistent storage provisioned by the common core services.
  • OpenPages: 252 GB
  • Watson OpenScale: 100 GB

Ephemeral storage:
250 MB
  • AI Factsheets: 300 GB
  • OpenPages: 10.9 GB
  • Watson OpenScale: 13.5 GB


Image storage:
  • AI Factsheets: Up to 2.27 GB
  • OpenPages: Up to 4.29 GB
  • Watson OpenScale: Up to 20.64 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
watsonx Orchestrate®
Operator pods:
0.2 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
43 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.512 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
138 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
640 GB

Ephemeral storage:
12 GB

Image storage:
Up to 36.24 GB

Minimum resources for a highly available production deployment.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
Power (ppc64le) hardware

The following services support POWER9 and POWER10.

Restriction: The following services have a limited set of features on ppc64le hardware:
Service Limitations
Analytics Engine powered by Apache Spark You cannot use, run, or deploy assets based on R frameworks.
Watson Machine Learning You cannot use, run, or deploy:
  • Assets based on GPU runtimes
  • Assets based on R frameworks
  • Assets trained using RStudio, such as R Shiny® apps

Not all software specifications are supported on Power hardware. For more information, see Supported machine learning tools, libraries, frameworks, and software specifications
Watson Studio You cannot use, run, or deploy:
  • Assets based on GPU runtimes
  • Assets based on R frameworks
  • Assets trained using RStudio, such as R Shiny apps
Watson Studio Runtimes
  • You cannot use GPU-based runtimes on Power hardware.
  • The Watson Natural Language Processing Version 4 foundation model is not supported on Power hardware.
Software vCPU Memory Storage Notes
Analytics Engine powered by Apache Spark
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
2.3 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
9 GB RAM
Persistent storage:This information is not currently available.

Ephemeral storage:
50 GB per vCPU request
(SSDs are recommended)

Image storage:
Up to 22.43 GB
 Spark jobs use emptyDir volumes for temporary storage and shuffling. If your Spark jobs use a lot of disk space for temporary storage or shuffling, make sure that you have sufficient space on the local disk where emptyDir volumes are created.
The recommended location is a partition in /var/lib. For more information, see Understanding ephemeral storagein the Red Hat OpenShift documentation:

If you don't have sufficient space on the local disk, Spark jobs might run slowly and some of the executors might evict jobs. A minimum of 50 GB of temporary storage for each vCPU request is recommended.

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

All of the Analytics Engine powered by Apache Spark service instances associated with an instance of Cloud Pak for Data use the same pool of resources.
Data Refinery
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.5 vCPU

Operand:
1 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
1 GB RAM

Operand:
4 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Uses the persistent storage provisioned by the common core services.

Ephemeral storage:
2 GB

Image storage:
Up to 4.15 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

This service is installed when you install IBM Knowledge Catalog or Watson Studio
Decision Optimization
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
0.9 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
1.5 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
12 GB

Ephemeral storage:
300 - 6500 MB

Image storage:
Up to 3.39 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
Db2
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
8 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
24 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
540 GB (assuming defaults)

Ephemeral storage:
2.2 - 9.7 GB

Image storage:
Up to 2.59 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

A dedicated node is recommended for production deployments of Db2. For details, see Setting up dedicated nodes.
Db2 Data Management Console
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
5 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
19.31 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
10 GB

Ephemeral storage:
7.5 GB

Image storage:
Up to 7.39 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

For information on sizing the provisioned instance, see Creating a service instance for Db2 Data Management Console from the web client.
Db2 Warehouse
Operator pods:
0.5 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
SMP: 7 vCPU
MPP: 39 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
SMP: 98 GB RAM
MPP: 610 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
540 GB (assuming defaults)

Ephemeral storage:
2.2 - 10.8 GB

Image storage:
Up to 0.83 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Use dedicated nodes for:

  • Production SMP deployments (recommended)
  • MPP deployments (required)

For detail, see Setting up dedicated nodes.

Development deployment
  • 1 node for SMP
  • 2 nodes for MPP
Production deployment
  • 1 node for SMP
  • 2-999 nodes for MPP
Recommended configuration

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
Watson Machine Learning
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
6 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.5 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.5 GB RAM

Operand:
27 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
150 GB

Ephemeral storage:This information is not currently available.

Image storage:
Up to 104.02 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

AVX2 is recommended but not required for AutoAI experiments.
Watson Studio
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
2 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
8.8 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Uses the persistent storage provisioned by the common core services. Additional storage is required if you enable Visual Studio Code support.

Ephemeral storage:
5 - 10 GB

Image storage:
Up to 6.16 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

If Data Refinery is not installed, add the vCPU and memory required for Data Refinery to the information listed for Watson Studio.

If you enable the Visual Studio Code extension for Watson Studio, you must allocate a minimum of 500-600 MB of storage per user for installed extensions. For details, see To enable Visual Studio Code in Post-installation tasks for the Watson Studio service.
Watson Studio Runtimes
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
Dictated by the runtimes
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
Dictated by the runtimes
Persistent storage:
Uses the persistent storage provisioned by the common core services.

Ephemeral storage:
Dictated by the runtimes.

Image storage:
Up to 148.77 GB
 Runtimes use on-demand vCPU and memory.
Watson Studio Runtimes includes the following runtimes:
  • Runtime 22.2 on Python 3.10
  • Runtime 23.1 on Python 3.10
Z (s390x) hardware
Restriction: The following services have a limited set of features on s390x hardware:
  • Watson Machine Learning
  • Watson Studio
  • Watson Studio Runtimes

For a list of the features that are available on s390x hardware, see Capabilities on IBM Z®

Software vCPU Memory Storage Notes
Analytics Engine powered by Apache Spark
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
2.3 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
9 GB RAM
Persistent storage:This information is not currently available.

Ephemeral storage:
50 GB per vCPU request
(SSDs are recommended)

Image storage:
Up to 22.43 GB
 Spark jobs use emptyDir volumes for temporary storage and shuffling. If your Spark jobs use a lot of disk space for temporary storage or shuffling, make sure that you have sufficient space on the local disk where emptyDir volumes are created.
The recommended location is a partition in /var/lib. For more information, see Understanding ephemeral storagein the Red Hat OpenShift documentation:

If you don't have sufficient space on the local disk, Spark jobs might run slowly and some of the executors might evict jobs. A minimum of 50 GB of temporary storage for each vCPU request is recommended.

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

All of the Analytics Engine powered by Apache Spark service instances associated with an instance of Cloud Pak for Data use the same pool of resources.
Data Refinery
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.5 vCPU

Operand:
1 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
1 GB RAM

Operand:
4 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Uses the persistent storage provisioned by the common core services.

Ephemeral storage:
2 GB

Image storage:
Up to 4.15 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

This service is installed when you install IBM Knowledge Catalog or Watson Studio
Db2
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
8 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
24 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
540 GB (assuming defaults)

Ephemeral storage:
2.2 - 9.7 GB

Image storage:
Up to 2.59 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

A dedicated node is recommended for production deployments of Db2. For details, see Setting up dedicated nodes.
Db2 Data Gate
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
2 vCPU per instance
Operator pods:
0.1 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
13 GB RAM per instance
Persistent storage:
50 GB per instance

Ephemeral storage:
0.6 - 3.25 GB

Image storage:
Up to 9.88 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
Db2 Data Management Console
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
5 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
19.31 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
10 GB

Ephemeral storage:
7.5 GB

Image storage:
Up to 7.39 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

For information on sizing the provisioned instance, see Creating a service instance for Db2 Data Management Console from the web client.
Db2 Warehouse
Operator pods:
0.5 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
SMP: 7 vCPU
MPP: 39 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
SMP: 98 GB RAM
MPP: 610 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
540 GB (assuming defaults)

Ephemeral storage:
2.2 - 10.8 GB

Image storage:
Up to 0.83 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Use dedicated nodes for:

  • Production SMP deployments (recommended)
  • MPP deployments (required)

For detail, see Setting up dedicated nodes.

Development deployment
  • 1 node for SMP
  • 2 nodes for MPP
Production deployment
  • 1 node for SMP
  • 2-999 nodes for MPP
Recommended configuration

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
Execution Engine for Apache Hadoop
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
For each deployment:
0.5 vCPU +  (0.5 vCPU * number of Hadoop registrations) + (0.6 vCPU * number of Hadoop jobs run)
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
For each deployment:
0.5 GB + (0.5 GB * number of Hadoop registrations) + (0.5 GB * number of Hadoop jobs run)
Persistent storage:
2 GB per image pushed

Ephemeral storage:
218 - 436 MB

Image storage:
Up to 2.46 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

Each image that is pushed to the remote Hadoop cluster requires disk space where image tgz file can be stored.

Execution Engine for Apache Hadoop requires an Execution Engine for Hadoop RPM installation on the Apache Hadoop cluster. For details, see Installing the service on Apache Hadoop clusters.
Watson Machine Learning
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
6 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.5 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.5 GB RAM

Operand:
27 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
150 GB

Ephemeral storage:This information is not currently available.

Image storage:
Up to 104.02 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

AVX2 is recommended but not required for AutoAI experiments.
Watson OpenScale
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
12.75 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
68 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
100 GB

Ephemeral storage:
13.5 GB

Image storage:
Up to 20.64 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.
Watson Studio
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
2 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
8.8 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Uses the persistent storage provisioned by the common core services. Additional storage is required if you enable Visual Studio Code support.

Ephemeral storage:
5 - 10 GB

Image storage:
Up to 6.16 GB

Minimum resources for an installation with a single replica per service.

Work with IBM Sales to get a more accurate sizing based on your expected workload.

If Data Refinery is not installed, add the vCPU and memory required for Data Refinery to the information listed for Watson Studio.

If you enable the Visual Studio Code extension for Watson Studio, you must allocate a minimum of 500-600 MB of storage per user for installed extensions. For details, see To enable Visual Studio Code in Post-installation tasks for the Watson Studio service.
Watson Studio Runtimes
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
Dictated by the runtimes
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
Dictated by the runtimes
Persistent storage:
Uses the persistent storage provisioned by the common core services.

Ephemeral storage:
Dictated by the runtimes.

Image storage:
Up to 148.77 GB
 Runtimes use on-demand vCPU and memory.
Watson Studio Runtimes includes the following runtimes:
  • Runtime 22.2 on Python 3.10
  • Runtime 23.1 on Python 3.10

Automatically installed dependencies

Automatically installed dependencies provide underlying functionality for services. Use the following sections to understand the hardware requirements for:

  • Common core services
  • Db2 as a service
  • Db2U

Use the following information to determine whether you have the minimum required resources to install each component on your cluster.

x86_64 hardware
Service vCPU Memory Storage Notes
Canvas
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
0.15 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
.0.6 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Uses the persistent storage provisioned by the common core services.

Ephemeral storage:
0.02 GB

Image storage:
Up to 1.26 GB
 Automatically installed by services that require it.

Depending on the services that you install, this software is installed once in each Red Hat OpenShift project where Cloud Pak for Data is installed. For details, see Service software requirements.
Common core services
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
11 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
18.3 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
500 GB

Ephemeral storage:
100 GB

Image storage:
Up to 22.64 GB
 Automatically installed by services that require it.

Depending on the services that you install, this software is installed once in each Red Hat OpenShift project where Cloud Pak for Data is installed. For details, see Service software requirements.
Db2 as a service
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
0.3 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
0.8 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Not applicable

Ephemeral storage:
0.5 GB

Image storage:
Up to 0.52 GB
 Automatically installed by services that require it.

Depending on the services that you install, this software is installed once in each Red Hat OpenShift project where Cloud Pak for Data is installed. For details, see Service software requirements.
Db2U
Operator pods:
0.6 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
Not applicable.
Operator pods:
0.7 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
Not applicable.
Persistent storage:
Not applicable

Ephemeral storage:
0.5 GB

Image storage:
Up to 41.43 GB
 Automatically installed by services that require it.

Depending on the services that you install, the operands for this software might be installed multiple times in each Red Hat OpenShift project where Cloud Pak for Data is installed.

The operator is installed once per instance of Cloud Pak for Data.

The operands are generated by the services that have a dependency on Db2U.

For a list of services that have a dependency on Db2U, see Service software requirements.
Power (ppc64le) hardware
Software vCPU Memory Storage Notes
Common core services
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
11 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
18.3 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
500 GB

Ephemeral storage:
100 GB

Image storage:
Up to 22.64 GB
 Automatically installed by services that require it.

Depending on the services that you install, this software is installed once in each Red Hat OpenShift project where Cloud Pak for Data is installed. For details, see Service software requirements.
Db2 as a service
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
0.3 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
0.8 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Not applicable

Ephemeral storage:
0.5 GB

Image storage:
Up to 0.52 GB
 Automatically installed by services that require it.

Depending on the services that you install, this software is installed once in each Red Hat OpenShift project where Cloud Pak for Data is installed. For details, see Service software requirements.
Db2U
Operator pods:
0.6 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
Not applicable.
Operator pods:
0.7 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
Not applicable.
Persistent storage:
Not applicable

Ephemeral storage:
0.5 GB

Image storage:
Up to 41.43 GB
 Automatically installed by services that require it.

Depending on the services that you install, the operands for this software might be installed multiple times in each Red Hat OpenShift project where Cloud Pak for Data is installed.

The operator is installed once per instance of Cloud Pak for Data.

The operands are generated by the services that have a dependency on Db2U.

For a list of services that have a dependency on Db2U, see Service software requirements.
Z (s390x) hardware
Software vCPU Memory Storage Notes
Common core services
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
11 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
18.3 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
500 GB

Ephemeral storage:
100 GB

Image storage:
Up to 22.64 GB
 Automatically installed by services that require it.

Depending on the services that you install, this software is installed once in each Red Hat OpenShift project where Cloud Pak for Data is installed. For details, see Service software requirements.
Db2 as a service
Operator pods:
0.1 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
0.3 vCPU
Operator pods:
0.256 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
0.8 GB RAM
Persistent storage:
Not applicable

Ephemeral storage:
0.5 GB

Image storage:
Up to 0.52 GB
 Automatically installed by services that require it.

Depending on the services that you install, this software is installed once in each Red Hat OpenShift project where Cloud Pak for Data is installed. For details, see Service software requirements.
Db2U
Operator pods:
0.6 vCPU

Catalog pods:
0.01 vCPU

Operand:
Not applicable.
Operator pods:
0.7 GB RAM

Catalog pods:
0.05 GB RAM

Operand:
Not applicable.
Persistent storage:
Not applicable

Ephemeral storage:
0.5 GB

Image storage:
Up to 41.43 GB
 Automatically installed by services that require it.

Depending on the services that you install, the operands for this software might be installed multiple times in each Red Hat OpenShift project where Cloud Pak for Data is installed.

The operator is installed once per instance of Cloud Pak for Data.

The operands are generated by the services that have a dependency on Db2U.

For a list of services that have a dependency on Db2U, see Service software requirements.