Hardware and System Requirements
Access Analyzer is deployed on a single Linux virtual machine. The installer runs preflight checks to validate that your system meets these requirements before installation begins.
Deployment Sizing
The installer enforces absolute minimums via preflight checks — installation is blocked if the system falls below these thresholds. Use the Production Recommended specifications for customer-facing or enterprise deployments.
Absolute installer minimums (enforced by preflight): 6 vCPUs, 24 GB RAM, 20 GB free disk.
| Size | Recommended CPU | Recommended Memory | Recommended Disk | Typical Environment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 8 cores | 24 GB | 1 TB SSD | Evaluation, pilots, up to ~1,000 assets |
| Medium | 16 cores | 48 GB | 1 TB SSD | Up to ~5,000 assets |
| Large | 32 cores | 64 GB | 1 TB SSD | 5,000+ assets / enterprise |
The --size flag scales memory thresholds by the specified multiplier. For example, --size 2 doubles the minimum and recommended memory requirements enforced by the preflight checks.
Disk Space Requirements
The installer validates free space on the following paths:
| Path | Minimum Free Space | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
/ | 20 GB | Root filesystem |
/var | 20 GB | K3s data, containers, logs |
/var/lib | 20 GB | K3s data directory |
/var/log | 5 GB | System and application logs |
/etc | 1 GB | Configuration files |
Write access is also verified for /var, /tmp, and /etc.
Operating System
| Requirement | Value |
|---|---|
| Distribution | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (primary tested platform) |
| Architecture | x86_64 (amd64) |
| Kernel | 5.15 or later |
Compatible distributions (engineer-validated): Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 and 9, CentOS, Fedora, and Debian stable releases are compatible with the installer. Ubuntu is Debian-based, so Debian stable releases are also supported.
Not supported: AIX and other non-Linux operating systems are not compatible. The installer requires a 64-bit Linux distribution with kernel capabilities including cgroups v1/v2, Linux namespaces, and overlay filesystem support.
Kernel and Container Runtime Requirements
The installer validates the following kernel features required for Kubernetes container operation:
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Linux Namespaces | NET, PID, IPC, UTS, MNT, USER — required for container isolation |
| Control Groups (cgroups) | v1 or v2 with memory and CPU controllers |
| Overlay Filesystem | Kernel module for container image layers |
| iptables | Required for Kubernetes networking |
Virtualization and Hypervisor Configuration
When deploying on a virtual machine, configure static memory allocation to ensure consistent performance. Dynamic or ballooned memory can cause the installer to underestimate available resources and lead to out-of-memory conditions during operation.
VMware vSphere / ESXi
Disable memory ballooning in vSphere client under VM Settings > VM Options > Advanced > Edit Configuration:
sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE"
mem.balloon.enable = "FALSE"
Microsoft Hyper-V
Configure static memory instead of dynamic memory:
Set-VMMemory -VMName "<VM_NAME>" -DynamicMemoryEnabled $false -StartupBytes 24GB
KVM / QEMU
Use hugepages for better memory performance. Add the following to your VM XML configuration:
<hugepages>
<page size='2048' unit='KiB'/>
</hugepages>
Swap Configuration
| System Memory | Swap Recommendation |
|---|---|
| 32 GB or more | Optional |
| Less than 32 GB | 2–4 GB recommended |
If no swap is configured on a system with less than 32 GB of RAM, the installer issues a warning. To create a swap file:
sudo fallocate -l 4G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile
# Make permanent
echo '/swapfile none swap sw 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab