UCP System requirements

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Docker Universal Control Plane can be installed on-premises or on the cloud. Before installing, be sure your infrastructure has these requirements.

Hardware and software requirements

You can install UCP on-premises or on a cloud provider. Common requirements:

Minimum requirements

  • 8GB of RAM for manager nodes
  • 4GB of RAM for worker nodes
  • 2 vCPUs for manager nodes
  • 5GB of free disk space for the /var partition for manager nodes (A minimum of 6GB is recommended.)
  • 500MB of free disk space for the /var partition for worker nodes

Note: Increased storage is required for Kubernetes manager nodes in UCP 3.1. If you are upgrading to UCP 3.1, refer to Kubelet restarting after upgrade to Universal Control Plane 3.1 for information on how to increase the size of the /var/lib/kubelet filesystem.

  • 16GB of RAM for manager nodes
  • 4 vCPUs for manager nodes
  • 25-100GB of free disk space

Note that Windows container images are typically larger than Linux container images. For this reason, you should provision more local storage for Windows nodes and for any DTR setups that store Windows container images.

Also, make sure the nodes are running an operating system support by Docker EE.

For highly-available installations, you also need a way to transfer files between hosts.

Workloads on manager nodes

These requirements assume that manager nodes won’t run regular workloads. If you plan to run additional workloads on manager nodes, you may need to provision more powerful nodes. If manager nodes become overloaded, the cluster may experience issues.

Ports used

When installing UCP on a host, a series of ports need to be opened to incoming traffic. Each of these ports will expect incoming traffic from a set of hosts, indicated as the “Scope” of that port. The three scopes are:

  • External: Traffic arrives from outside the cluster through end-user interaction.
  • Internal: Traffic arrives from other hosts in the same cluster.
  • Self: Traffic arrives to that port only from processes on the same host.

Make sure the following ports are open for incoming traffic on the respective host types:

Hosts Port Scope Purpose
managers, workers TCP 179 Internal Port for BGP peers, used for kubernetes networking
managers TCP 443 (configurable) External, Internal Port for the UCP web UI and API
managers TCP 2376 (configurable) Internal Port for the Docker Swarm manager. Used for backwards compatibility
managers TCP 2377 (configurable) Internal, Port for control communication between swarm nodes
managers, workers UDP 4789 Internal, Port for overlay networking
managers TCP 6443 (configurable) External, Internal Port for Kubernetes API server endpoint
managers, workers TCP 6444 Self Port for Kubernetes API reverse proxy
managers, workers TCP, UDP 7946 Internal Port for gossip-based clustering
managers, workers TCP 9099 Self Port for calico health check
managers, workers TCP 10250 Internal Port for Kubelet
managers, workers TCP 12376 Internal Port for a TLS authentication proxy that provides access to the Docker Engine
managers, workers TCP 12378 Self Port for Etcd reverse proxy
managers TCP 12379 Internal Port for Etcd Control API
managers TCP 12380 Internal Port for Etcd Peer API
managers TCP 12381 Internal Port for the UCP cluster certificate authority
managers TCP 12382 Internal Port for the UCP client certificate authority
managers TCP 12383 Internal Port for the authentication storage backend
managers TCP 12384 Internal Port for the authentication storage backend for replication across managers
managers TCP 12385 Internal Port for the authentication service API
managers TCP 12386 Internal Port for the authentication worker
managers TCP 12388 Internal Internal Port for the Kubernetes API Server

Avoid firewall conflicts

For SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2 (SLES12), the FW_LO_NOTRACK flag is turned on by default in the openSUSE firewall. This speeds up packet processing on the loopback interface, and breaks certain firewall setups that need to redirect outgoing packets via custom rules on the local machine.

To turn off the FW_LO_NOTRACK option, edit the /etc/sysconfig/SuSEfirewall2 file and set FW_LO_NOTRACK="no". Save the file and restart the firewall or reboot.

For For SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP3, the default value for FW_LO_NOTRACK was changed to no.

Enable ESP traffic

For overlay networks with encryption to work, you need to ensure that IP protocol 50 (Encapsulating Security Payload) traffic is allowed.

Enable IP-in-IP traffic

The default networking plugin for UCP is Calico, which uses IP Protocol Number 4 for IP-in-IP encapsulation.

If you’re deploying to AWS or another cloud provider, enable IP-in-IP traffic for your cloud provider’s security group.

Timeout settings

Make sure the networks you’re using allow the UCP components enough time to communicate before they time out.

Component Timeout (ms) Configurable
Raft consensus between manager nodes 3000 no
Gossip protocol for overlay networking 5000 no
etcd 500 yes
RethinkDB 10000 no
Stand-alone cluster 90000 no

Time Synchronization

In distributed systems like Docker UCP, time synchronization is critical to ensure proper operation. As a best practice to ensure consistency between the engines in a UCP cluster, all engines should regularly synchronize time with a Network Time Protocol (NTP) server. If a server’s clock is skewed, unexpected behavior may cause poor performance or even failures.

Compatibility and maintenance lifecycle

Docker EE is a software subscription that includes three products:

  • Docker Engine with enterprise-grade support
  • Docker Trusted Registry
  • Docker Universal Control Plane

Learn more about compatibility and the maintenance lifecycle for these products:

Version compatibility

UCP 3.1.6 requires minimum versions of the following Docker components:

  • Docker Enterprise Engine 18.09.0-ee-1 or higher
  • DTR 2.6 or higher

Where to go next

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