The Neo4j Manual v3.1.0-SNAPSHOT23.1. System Requirements

Performance is generally memory or I/O bound for large graphs, and compute bound for graphs that fit in memory.

More memory allows even larger graphs, but needs to be configured properly to avoid larger garbage collection operations. See Section 24.3, “Performance Guide” for suggestions.

Aside from capacity, the performance characteristics of the disk are the most important when selecting storage. Neo4j workloads tend significantly toward random reads. Prefer media with low average seek time: SSD over spinning disks. Consult the section called “Disks, RAM and other tips” for more details.

For proper ACID behavior, the filesystem must support flush (fsync, fdatasync). See the section called “Linux filesystem tuning” for a discussion on how to configure the filesystem in Linux for optimal performance.

Neo4j requires a Java Virtual Machine to operate. Community Edition installers for Windows and Mac include a JVM for convenience. Other distributions, including all distributions of Neo4j Enterprise Edition, require that the JVM be provided.

Important It is strongly recommended to use an up-to-date Java release as there are issues in early versions of Java 8 that are known to adversely affect Neo4j.