NetMon Reference Architecture

NetMon can be installed directly on supported hardware or on a virtual machine. Select a computer or virtual environment that meets the requirements listed in this section.

NetMon is not supported on systems that use shared disks or external mounted storage. All storage must be presented to the operating system directly as block disks. Remotely connected iSCSI or FC storage must be presented through a hypervisor.

Reference Platform

Performance

Hardware

Operating System

Disk/Vol 1 Config

Disk/Vol 2 Config

Minimal / Lab

Inspection Rate: <250Mb/s
PCAP Rate: <250Mb/s

8 vCPU
64GB RAM
2+ NIC

Rocky Linux 9.4+

200GB
SSD Recommended
Minimum IOPS: 100

500GB+
SSD or HDD
Minimum IOPS: 500

LR-NM3600

Inspection Rate: 2.5Gb/s
PCAP Rate: 1.0Gb/s*

Dell OEM R660XS 1-RU
1 x Intel Xeon Silver 4416+ 2G, 20C/40T, 16GT/s, 37.5M Cache
96 GB RAM (6x16GB)
PERC H755 RAID Controller with 8GB Cache
4 x 10 Gb/s Base-T OCP NICs
2 x 1 Gb/s Base-T LOM NICs

Rocky Linux 9.4+

Physical Disk:

2 x 480 GB M.2 SSD
0.3 DWPD
RAID 1

Virtual Disk:

480 GB

Logical Volume:

/ (192GB)
/home (48GB)
/dev/shm (47GB)
/run (19GB)

Physical Disk:

8 x 1.2TB HDD 10k RPM SAS
RAID 5

Virtual Disk:

7.6 TB

Logical Volume:

/usr/local (1.6TB)
/pcap0 (6.0TB)

LR-NM5600

Inspection Rate: 10Gb/s
PCAP Rate: 2.5Gb/s*

Dell OEM R760 2-RU
2 x Intel Xeon Gold 6426Y 2.5G, 16C/32T, 16GT/s, 38M Cache
256 GB RAM (16x16GB)
PERC H965i RAID Controller with 8GB Cache
4 x 10 Gb/s Base-T OCP NICs
2 x 1 Gb/s Base-T LOM NICs
2 x 10/25Gb/s SFP28 NICs (optics not included)

Rocky Linux 9.4+

Physical Disk:

2 x 480 GB M.2 SSD
0.3 DWPD
RAID 1

Virtual Disk:

480 GB

Logical Volume:

/ (192GB)
/home (48GB)
/dev/shm (47GB)
/run (19GB)

Physical Disk:

24 x 900GB Mixed-Use SSD SAS 24Gb/s
3 DWPD Mixed-Use†
RAID 5

Virtual Disk:

20 TB

Logical Volume:

/usr/local (2.0TB)
/pcap0 (8.8TB)
/pcap1 (8.8TB)

*PCAP rates can burst to much higher values, but should remain below rated averages to prevent premature disk burn-out.

†Mixed-Use SSDs have a limited write-life which is not covered under warranty replacement. Incorrect configuration of PCAP or oversubscription of the PCAP rate can result in premature exhaustion of disk write endurance, which is not covered under any form of warranty/replacement. Use caution when configuring PCAP on SSD-based disks and monitor available disk write endurance.