Set virtual machine hardware properties

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After the IBM Cloud Object Storage System™ vAppliance is deployed on the host system, you can modify its hardware properties on the IBM Cloud Object Storage System™ vManager Appliance and the IBM Cloud Object Storage System™ vAccesser® Appliance.

The table summarizes the minimum settings for all vAppliances. These settings suffice for a demonstration or a lightly loaded production IBM Cloud Object Storage System™. For systems with higher performance expectations, provision more resources.

Note: Contact IBM Cloud Object Storage System™ Customer Support for recommended settings for a particular use case.
Table 1. Minimum recommended virtual machine hardware properties for virtual appliances
Component vAccesser® Appliance vManager Appliance
RAM (GB) 16 16
CPU 2 4
Video card Video Card Video Card
VMCI Restricted Restricted
SCSI Controller 0 Paravirtual Paravirtual
SCSI Controller 1 N/A N/A
SCSI Controller 2 N/A N/A
SCSI Controller 3 N/A N/A
Hard disk 1 (GB) OS Virtual Drive (128) Virtual Drive (256)
Network adapter 1 VM Network VM Network
Note:
  • On vAccesser® Appliances, associate the OS drive with SCSI controller 0.
    Warning: Machine configuration changes (CPU, Memory, Disk, and NIC) are not supported at runtime and must be performed while the VM is powered down.

    Consult with IBM sales engineering to determine the appropriate performance requirements.

  • Using vAccesser® Appliances on VMware in a production environment will benefit from allocating more memory than the minimum system requirements. The use of 2 CPU 16GB vAccesser® Appliances should only be for a non-production environment.
  • The actual IOPS capability of any vAccesser® Appliance configuration will vary depending on the underlying virtualized hypervisor capability. However, increasing the number of vAccesser® Appliances will scale the IOPS capability linearly at least until we hit a bottleneck of the underlying hypervisor infrastructure.
  • Depending on the workload, the vAccesser® Appliance capabilities may be increased for network, CPU, and memory capacity to address resource constraints. Increasing NIC capacity, CPU and memory can improve performance if those resources reach saturation. This is only valid up to the hypervisor capabilities.
  • A workload heavier in small object (less than 1 MiB) writes will benefit from additional CPUs and memory.
  • vAccesser® Appliances on VMware leverage a VMware kernel module which gains little advantage with greater than eight CPUs.