Chapter 1. System requirements and supported architectures Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 delivers a stable, secure, consistent foundation across hybrid cloud deployments with the tools needed to deliver workloads faster with less effort. You can deploy RHEL as a guest on supported hypervisors and Cloud provider environments as well as on physical infrastructure, so your applications can take advantage of innovations in the leading hardware architecture platforms. Review the guidelines provided for system, hardware, security, memory, and RAID before installing. If you want to use your system as a virtualization host, review the necessary hardware requirements for virtualization . Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports the following architectures: AMD and Intel 64-bit architectures The 64-bit ARM architecture IBM Power Systems, Little Endian 64-bit IBM Z architectures 1.1. Supported installation targets An installation target is a storage device that stores Red Hat Enterprise Linux and boots the system. Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports the following installation targets for IBMZ , IBM Power, AMD64, Intel 64, and 64-bit ARM systems: Storage connected by a standard internal interface, such as DASD, SCSI, SATA, or SAS BIOS/firmware RAID devices on the Intel64, AMD64 and arm64 architectures NVDIMM devices in sector mode on the Intel64 and AMD64 architectures, supported by the nd_pmem driver. Storage connected via Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters, such as DASDs (IBM Z architecture only) and SCSI LUNs, including multipath devices. Some might require vendor-provided drivers. Xen block devices on Intel processors in Xen virtual machines. VirtIO block devices on Intel processors in KVM virtual machines. Red Hat does not support installation to USB drives or SD memory cards. For information about support for third-party virtualization technologies, see the Red Hat Hardware Compatibility List . 1.2. System specifications The Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation program automatically detects and installs your system's hardware, so you should not have to supply any specific system information. However, for certain Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation scenarios, it is recommended that you record system specifications for future reference. These scenarios include: Installing RHEL with a customized partition layout Record: The model numbers, sizes, types, and interfaces of the disks attached to the system. For example, Seagate ST3320613AS 320 GB on SATA0, Western Digital WD7500AAKS 750 GB on SATA1. Installing RHEL as an additional operating system on an existing system Record: Partitions used on the system. This information can include file system types, device node names, file system labels, and sizes, and allows you to identify specific partitions during the partitioning process. If one of the operating systems is a Unix operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux may report the device names differently. Additional information can be found by executing the equivalent of the mount command and the blkid command, and in the /etc/fstab file. If multiple operating systems are installed, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation program attempts to automatically detect them, and to configure boot loader to boot them. You can manually configure additional operating systems if they are not detected automatically. Installing RHEL from an image on a local disk Record: The disk and directory that holds the image. Installing RHEL from a network location If the network has to be configured manually, that is, DHCP is not used. Record: IP address Netmask Gateway IP address Server IP addresses, if required Contact your network administrator if you need assistance with networking requirements. Installing RHEL on an iSCSI target Record: The location of the iSCSI target. Depending on your network, you may need a CHAP user name and password, and a reverse CHAP user name and password. Installing RHEL if the system is part of a domain Verify that the domain name is supplied by the DHCP server. If it is not, enter the domain name during installation. 1.3. Disk and memory requirements If several operating systems are installed, it is important that you verify that the allocated disk space is separate from the disk space required by Red Hat Enterprise Linux. In some cases, it is important to dedicate specific partitions to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, for example, for AMD64, Intel 64, and 64-bit ARM, at least two partitions ( / and swap ) must be dedicated to RHEL and for IBM Power Systems servers, at least three partitions ( / , swap , and a PReP boot partition) must be dedicated to RHEL. Additionally, you must have a minimum of 10 GiB of available disk space. To install Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you must have a minimum of 10 GiB of space in either unpartitioned disk space or in partitions that can be deleted. For more information, see Partitioning reference . Table 1.1. Minimum RAM requirements Installation type Minimum RAM Local media installation (USB, DVD) 1.5 GiB for aarch64, IBM Z and x86_64 architectures 3 GiB for ppc64le architecture NFS network installation 1.5 GiB for aarch64, IBM Z and x86_64 architectures 3 GiB for ppc64le architecture HTTP, HTTPS or FTP network installation 3 GiB for IBM Z and x86_64 architectures 4 GiB for aarch64 and ppc64le architectures It is possible to complete the installation with less memory than the minimum requirements. The exact requirements depend on your environment and installation path. Test various configurations to determine the minimum required RAM for your environment. Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux using a Kickstart file has the same minimum RAM requirements as a standard installation. However, additional RAM may be required if your Kickstart file includes commands that require additional memory, or write data to the RAM disk. 1.4. Graphics display resolution requirements Your system must have the following minimum resolution to ensure a smooth and error-free installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Table 1.2. Display resolution Product version Resolution Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Minimum : 800 x 600 Recommended : 1026 x 768 1.5. UEFI Secure Boot and Beta release requirements If you plan to install a Beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, on systems having UEFI Secure Boot enabled, then first disable the UEFI Secure Boot option and then begin the installation. UEFI Secure Boot requires that the operating system kernel is signed with a recognized private key, which the system's firmware verifies using the corresponding public key. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux Beta releases, the kernel is signed with a Red Hat Beta-specific public key, which the system fails to recognize by default. As a result, the system fails to even boot the installation media. Additional resources For information about installing RHEL on IBM, see IBM installation documentation Security hardening Composing a customized RHEL system image Red Hat ecosystem catalog RHEL technology capabilities and limits

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