Default specifications of the virtual appliances supplied

• CPU: 1
• RAM: 2048MB
• Hard Disk: 1 x SCSI 50Gb (set to grow as necessary in 2Gb file increments)
• CD/DVD Drive: 1 (auto detect)
• Network Interface Cards: 1 (eth0) bridged, configured to use DHCP to obtain an IP address.

The Network Interface Card (eth0) is configured to use DHCP however this can be changed to use a static IP.
During the install process the following network configuration is required:

• DHCP or static IP for eth0 interface
  If Static IP then provide the following:
  • Appliance IP Address
  • Gateway
  • Subnet Mask
  • DNS for address lookup

Defaults For initial testing at small scale the default configuration is sufficient. For production use, or use at scale the user must increase the RAM, CPU and disk configuration. See Configuring the Virtual Appliance for more details.

Supported physical platform minimum specification

The physical platform onto which you install BMC Atrium Discovery version 8.1.1 must be supported by 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 5.4. It must also have the following types of components, their equivalents, or better; those used in the HP ProLiant DL380 G6 which was the final production hardware appliance version of BMC Atrium Discovery:

Appliance Sizing guidelines

There are many factors to be taken into consideration when specifying the configuration of the appliance. Every environment is different and consequently the data published here is purely a guide as to how to configure your appliance.

To aid this process we have defined four "classes" of appliance deployment that broadly follow our experience of how BMC Atrium Discovery is deployed in the field. They are differentiated by how many Operating System Instances (OSIs) that are being scanned by BMC Atrium Discovery.

The names given to these classes are of use only in this document and do not relate to the various editions that BMC Atrium Discovery is available in.

The classes are:

• Proof of Concept. Small test deployments of BMC Atrium Discovery, scanning around 150 OSIs.
• Baseline. A typical baseline as offered by BMC. Scanning of around 500 OSIs
• Datacentre. A typical large scale deployment. Scanning around 2000-> 5000 OSIs.
• Consolidated Enterprise. Enterprise scale deployments, typically a Consolidation Appliance taking feeds from many Scanning Appliances. Typically scanning 20000 -> 40000 OSIs.

32 bit appliance memory considerations A 32 bit appliance cannot be used in any deployments requiring more than 4GB RAM. In practice this means that any deployment beyond a proof of concept must use a 64 bit appliance. The memory limit for a 32 bit appliance can be lower than 4GB depending on your environment.

Impact of Appliance Snapshot

The BMC Atrium Discovery Appliance Snapshot feature allows you take a snapshot of the datastore and critical configuration files to facilitate moving the data between appliances.
The process by which the data is packaged means that a considerable overhead of empty disk space is needed to complete the task.

Therefore when providing guidelines for how much disk space to give you Virtual Appliance for the database, whether you intend to perform Appliance Snapshots or not is an important choice to make. If you do plan to make use of this feature then you will need to provision considerably larger disks.

Appliance sizing guide lines - including the ability to perform Appliance Snapshots

Appliance sizing guide lines - not including the ability to perform Appliance Snapshots