Reference hardware configuration

The minimum hardware requirements of each software component are listed in the System Requirements chapter of the User Guide, which also explains how important each hardware resource (CPU, RAM, disk, network cards) is for each component. The page of each Wanguard component on this website lists the minimum requirements as well.

We highly recommend installing the software on dedicated servers rather than virtual machines, because:

• virtualized environments often lack a stable, highly accurate clock source — a critical requirement for the Packet Sensor and the Packet Filter;
• virtual machines often suffer from disk I/O bottlenecks, while the Console needs fast, uninterrupted access to large disk drives;
• resources must be provisioned in a predictable and timely manner, which is not guaranteed under a hypervisor.

If you are selecting hardware for 10 Gbps+ packet-based traffic monitoring or DDoS filtering, see our up-to-date guide on how to build your own anti-DDoS appliance from commodity server hardware — it covers server sizing, network cards and deployment options.