System requirements
We break these into Minimum (a working lab / small pilot / dev box) and Recommended (production pilot).
Minimum
| CPU | 4 physical cores, x86_64 |
| RAM | 8 GB |
| Storage | 20 GB free on / after install |
| NICs | 1 supported adapter (see matrix) + a separate management NIC |
| Hugepages | 4 × 1G (allocated at boot via GRUB) |
| OS | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble), kernel 6.8+ |
| BIOS | Intel VT-d / AMD IOMMU enabled |
What Minimum gets you: enough to serve a small subscriber base (a few dozen active sessions), evaluate the UI, exercise the setup wizard, and test config flows. Not tuned for throughput.
Recommended
| CPU | 16+ physical cores, dual-socket, hyperthreading off |
| RAM | 32 GB+ |
| Storage | 100 GB SSD on / (Prometheus TSDB + audit log grow over time) |
| NICs | 2× supported adapters, same NUMA socket as the VPP worker cores |
| Hugepages | 8 × 1G |
| OS | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble), kernel 6.8+ |
| BIOS | Intel VT-d + Intel Turbo Boost off (for consistent worker latency) |
Why hyperthreading off: VPP treats logical CPUs as physical for pinning; sibling hyperthreads on the same physical core fight for the same execution units and throughput drops. Turning HT off makes CPU numbering match physical cores 1:1 and lets the wizard's NUMA math be correct.