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========================================
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Sensei: Hardware Requirements
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========================================
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Due to the nature of deep packet analysis and detailed drill-down reporting functionality, Sensei requires more hardware resources than a standard L3-L4 firewall.
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.. Note::
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With the Sensei 1.5 release, you can offload your reporting database to an external system. This allows you to be able to run Sensei on systems with a constrained amount of RAM.
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It is recommended that you check if your Ethernet adapter functions well with netmap.
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CPU & Memory
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-------------
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Because the analytics module relies on Elasticsearch to process large amounts of data, the amount of the memory available in the system is crucial for the overall performance of Sensei.
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.. Tip::
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If the number of active devices are more than 250 and the sustained WAN bandwidth is higher than 100 Mbps, we do not recommend deploying Sensei as a virtual guest since resources in virtual environments are generally shared between guest systems.
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Below is the recommended minimum hardware requirements for Sensei based on the number of devices and the amount of sustained bandwidth:
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===================== ========================= ================== ======================================================================
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**# Active Devices** **Maximum WAN Bandwidth** **Minimum Memory** **Minimum CPU**
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0-25 50 Mbps 4 GB A Dual-Core CPU (x86_64 compatible, single core PassMark score of 200)
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25-50 150 Mbps - 10 Kpps 4 GB Intel Dual-Core i5 2.0 GHz (2 Cores, 4 Threads) or equivalent
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50-100 200 Mbps - 20 Kpps 8 GB Intel Dual-Core i5 2.2 GHz (2 Cores, 4 Threads) or equivalent
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100-250 300 Mbps - 40 Kpps 16 GB Intel Dual-Core i5 3.2 GHz (2 Cores, 4 Threads) or equivalent
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250-1000 500 Mbps - 100 Kpps 32 GB Intel Quad-Core i7 3.4 GHz (4 Cores, 8 Threads) or equivalent
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===================== ========================= ================== ======================================================================
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.. Note::
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Sensei requires at least 2 GB of memory. The installer will not continue if you have less than 2 GB of RAM. We recommend 4 GB memory to have an improved experience.
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-----------------
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Ethernet Adapter
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-----------------
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Sensei uses a FreeBSD subsystem called `netmap(4) <https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=netmap&sektion=4>`_ to access raw Ethernet frames. With FreeBSD 11 (OPNsense version <= 20.1) this software can be very particular in terms of proper driver compatibility.
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Intel based adapters, particularly em(4) and igb(4), are observed to perform well in terms of stability and performance.
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Sunny Valley Networks is sponsoring developments on this project so you can expect netmap(4) will better support a wide range of Ethernet drivers.
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-----------
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Disk Space
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Sensei uses `Elasticsearch <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasticsearch>`_ or `MongoDB <https://www.mongodb.com/>`_ as its backend to store large data sets. Please allow at least 5 MB of disk space per hour per megabit/second throughput.
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If you're running a 100 Mbps link \(about 100 users\) which is quite active during the daytime and idle rest of the day, you may calculate the space needed as follows:
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.. code-block:: none
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5 MB x 12 hours x 100 Mbps = 6 GB per day.
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6 GB x 7 days a week = 42 GB per week.
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42 x 4 weeks a month = 164 GB per month.
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As of `version 0.7.0 <https://www.sunnyvalley.io/blog/what-s-cooking-for-0-7>`_, Sensei expires old report data to free up disk space for the most recent data based on the configured number of days of history to keep.
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