bitbucket data center hardware requirements?

[Lily]

I'm having trouble finding details on the hardware requirements and limitations for Bitbucket Data Center besides needing 3 gb of RAM and a dual processor.  What are the other hardware requirements for each node (elastic search, db, load balancer, file system, applicaiton nodes)?  What version of linux does data center support?  Can I install data center on VMWare? 

[Daniel Eads]

Hello Lily, welcome to the Community!

I'd be happy to go into more detail about the system requirements for Bitbucket Data Center. In general, it's difficult to quantify requirements since each installation has different usage patterns, number of users, etc. 

I would recommend looking at the AWS sizing information for Bitbucket and matching the instance types back to standard terms if you're looking to run on-premise rather than in AWS. Below I'll mention the defaults our Bitbucket Data Center quickstart uses if you launch an environment in AWS using our template.

Let's look at each of your questions:

1. What are the other hardware requirements for each node (elastic search, db, load balancer, file system, applicaiton nodes)?
   • Elastic Search: Our AWS quickstart defaults to an m4.xlarge (4 CPU, 16gb RAM)
   • Database: This will vary, but our AWS quickstart defaults to an m4.large (2 CPU, 8gb RAM)
   • Load balancer: Not much is necessary to run a load balancer - but this is going to vary depending on which you select. HAProxy recommends 2 CPUs (as fast as you can get them) and 4gb RAM for high traffic sites.
   • File system: More details are in the installation guide , but our AWS quickstart defaults to an m4.xlarge (4 CPU, 16gb RAM). Disk speed is a major consideration on this piece
   • Application nodes: 3gb of RAM / dual processor could be considered the minimum. Our AWS quickstart defaults to c5.xlarge (4 CPU, 8gb RAM)
2. What version of linux does data center support?
   • The major considerations are the ability to run a supported version of Java, an up to date git, and an openssl version that supports ciphers you might need to connect to clients with. CentOS 7 or 8, or Ubuntu 20.04 are popular choices. I would recommend choosing something that you already support in your environment and has a few years of security update support ahead of it.
     
     
3. Can I install data center on VMWare? 
   • Yes, you can run your nodes as VMs.

You might be able to scale down some of the resources listed from the AWS defaults depending on your users and usage patterns. However, I would err on the side of overprovisioning if you can until the usage patterns are known.

Cheers,
Daniel