Software requirements

Learn about software requirements for z Systems® Development and Test Environment

z Systems Development and Test Environment instance

With z Systems Development and Test Environment, you can install the product directly on the operating system that is running on a supported hardware platform (native installations), or you can install the product on a supported operating system that is running in a supported virtualization environment (virtual installations). These operating systems and platforms are required:

Operating System requirements for native installations:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.0 or later minor release
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.0 or later minor release
  • Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS or later minor release
Operating System platforms that are supported for virtual installations:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.0 or later minor release
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.0 or later minor release
  • Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS or later minor release

You can run on later releases within each version. The recommended Linux version is RHEL 7.0 and Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS. If problems are encountered, support for releases within the supported version is provided.

Virtualization Technologies supported:
  • VMWare ESXi 5.1
  • Support for KVM kernel modules
  • Support for XEN hypervisor.

VMWare ESXi 5.1 must be run on 64-bit Intel compatible hardware.

Directly attached SCSI tape drives are not supported by z Systems Development and Test Environment within any virtualized environment.

When you are running z Systems Development and Test Environment in a virtual environment, you must have sufficient physical memory and processor cores to completely provision each instance of z Systems Development and Test Environment.
  • For each instance of z Systems Development and Test Environment, the machine that is running your virtualization software must have one physical core for each CP in the instance, plus one physical core for Linux.
  • Physical memory on the machine that is running the virtualization software must be sufficient to contain the total memory of all z Systems Development and Test Environment instances.
  • Processors and memory that is used for virtual machines that are running z Systems Development and Test Environment are considered dedicated to z Systems Development and Test Environment. Careful planning must be done if other virtual machines are to run on the same hardware.
  • Failure to provide sufficient physical processors and memory, or the over-commitment of memory or processor cores, might lead to severe performance problems and might cause unpredictable errors, or errors that are difficult to diagnose.

Product license server or license manager

Operating System requirements:
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.0 or later minor release
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.0 or later minor release
Virtualization Technologies supported:
  • VMWare ESXi 5.1
  • Support for KVM kernel modules (packaged with supported levels of RHEL)
Parent topic: z Systems Development and Test Environment prerequisites