Prerequisites for GCP Anthos

Deprecation notice

Support for K3s is being discontinued; migrate to a supported Kubernetes platform.

Environment Prerequisites

The minimum supported size for a Portworx cluster is three nodes. Each node must meet the following hardware, software, and network requirements:

Hardware
CPU	4 cores minimum, 8 cores recommended
RAM	4GB minimum, 8GB recommended
Disk /var /opt	2GB free 3GB free
Backing drive	8GB (minimum required) 128 GB (minimum recommended)
Operating system root partition	64 GB is the minimum required size for the root filesystem which contains the operating system 128 GB minimum recommended
Storage drives	Storage drives must be unmounted block storage: raw disks, drive partitions, LVM, or cloud block storage.
Network connectivity	Bandwidth: 10 Gbps recommended 1 Gbps minimum Latency requirements for synchronous replication: less than 10ms between nodes in the cluster
Node type	Bare metal and virtual machine (VM)

Software
Linux kernel and distro	Kernel version 3.10 or greater. To check if your Linux distro and kernel are supported, see Supported Kernels.
Docker	Version 1.13.1 or greater.
Key-value store	Portworx needs a key-value store to perform its operations. As such, install a clustered key-value database (kvdb) with a three node cluster. You can also use Internal KVDB during installation. In this mode, Portworx will create and manage an internal key-value store (KVDB) cluster. If you plan of using your own KVDB, refer to KVDB for Portworx for details on recommendations for installing and configuring a KVDB cluster.
Disable swap	Disable swap on all nodes that will run the Portworx software. Ensure that the swap device is not automatically mounted on server reboot.
Network Time Protocol (NTP)	All nodes in the cluster should be in sync with NTP time. Any time drift between nodes can cause unexpected behaviour, impacting services.

Hypervisor
VMware vSphere	Version 7.0 Version 8.0

Portworx network requirements

Portworx runs as a pod in a Kubernetes cluster and uses specific ports for communication, data transfer, and telemetry.

East-to-west

note

• Portworx also requires the following ports:
  • An open KVDB port. For example, if you're using etcd externally, open port 2379.
  • An open UDP port at 9002.
• For telemetry, open ports 9024, 12001, and 12002. Ensure you are running Portworx Operator version 23.7.0 or higher to configure the telemetry port:
  • Portworx Versions 2.13.7 and Older: Open port 9024 specifically for telemetry.
  • Portworx Versions 2.13.8 and Newer: Use port 9029 for telemetry.

Kubernetes	Description
9001	Portworx management port [REST]
9002	Portworx node-to-node port [gossip]/UDP
9003	Portworx storage data port
9004	Portworx namespace [RPC]
9012	Portworx node-to-node communication port [gRPC]
9013	Portworx namespace driver [gRPC]
9014	Portworx diags server port [gRPC]
9018	Portworx kvdb peer-to-peer port [gRPC]
9019	Portworx kvdb client service [gRPC]
9021	Portworx gRPC SDK gateway [REST]
9022	Portworx health monitor [REST]
9029	Telemetry log uploader
12002	Telemetry phone home

Inbound

Kubernetes	Description
9001	Portworx management port [REST]
9021	Portworx gRPC SDK gateway [REST]

Outbound

Supported Kubernetes versions

Before you install Portworx on Kubernetes, ensure that you're using a supported Kubernetes version:

Portworx Enterprise supported Kubernetes versions

3.1

Type	Supported Versions
Bare metal	Anthos version: 1.14, Kubernetes version: 1.25 Anthos version: 1.15, Kubernetes version: 1.26 Anthos version: 1.16.0-gke.669, Kubernetes version: v1.27.6-gke.2500 Anthos version: 1.28.500-gke.121, Kubernetes version: v1.28.8-gke.2000 Anthos version: 1.29.100-gke.248, Kubernetes version: v1.29.4-gke.200 Anthos version: 1.30.0-gke.1930, Kubernetes version: v1.30.3-gke.200
VMware	Anthos version: 1.14, vSphere version: 7.0.3, Kubernetes version: 1.25.5-gke.100 Anthos version: 1.15, vSphere version: 7.0.3, Kubernetes version: 1.26.2-gke.1001 Anthos version: 1.16, vSphere version: 8.0, Kubernetes version: v1.27.4-gke.1600 Anthos version: 1.28.200-gke.111, vSphere version: 8.0, Kubernetes version: v1.28.4-gke.1400 Anthos version: 1.29.100-gke.248, vSphere version: 7.0.3 & 8.0, Kubernetes version: v1.29.4-gke.200 Anthos version: 1.30.0-gke.1930, vSphere version: 7.0.3 & 8.0, Kubernetes version: v1.30.3-gke.200

3.0

Supported Kubernetes Version
Bare metal Anthos version: 1.14; Kubernetes version: 1.25 Anthos versions: 1.15; Kubernetes version: 1.26 VMware Anthos version: 1.14; vSphere version: 7.0.3; Kubernetes version: 1.25.5-gke.100 Anthos versions: 1.15, vSphere version: 7.0.3; Kubernetes version: 1.26.2-gke.1001

2.13

Supported Kubernetes Version
Bare metal Anthos version: 1.14; Kubernetes version: 1.25 VMware Anthos version: 1.14; vSphere version: 7.0.3; Kubernetes version: 1.25.5-gke.100

Supported disk types

Portworx provides multiple disk types to meet different platform needs. This document lists all the disk types that Portworx supports for disk provisioning across different cloud providers.

Cloud provider	Disk types
vSphere	eagerzeroedthick lazyzeroedthick thin
GKE	pd-balanced pd-ssd pd-standard

Considerations/Warnings

warning

By default, Google includes Kernel version 5.15 from Anthos version 1.14 for vSphere. Therefore, upgrading to Anthos version 1.14 or newer can result in Kernel performance issues, leading to a drop in the sequential write operations. Avoid using this Anthos version and Kernel version until the issue is fixed. See the bug description for more information.

Best practices

Prevent Accidental Deletion: If your virtualization software has a feature to prevent accidental deletion, you should enable it for the VMs hosting PX nodes. While PX is designed to handle the loss of some nodes without issue, losing a significant number of storage nodes due to VM deletion can result in a loss of quorum and an outage. For more information on how to prevent accidental deletion of VM, refer to Prevent accidental VM deletion on Google cloud compute engine.