8 System Requirements

There are two different sets of system requirements for the host computer to consider:

  • Docker system requirements: “ensuring docker can be run”
  • IQdesktop system requirements: “ensuring the user has access to anough computational power”

8.1 Docker System Requirements

IQdesktop runs on docker. That means a host computer will need to minimally be compliant to the minimum system requirements of docker. The good thing is that system requirements for docker are fairly low and it should run on any modern operating system. At the point of writing of this documentation the requirements were as follows:

  • Windows:
    • Windows 10 64-bit: Pro, Enterprise, or Education (Build 17134 or later)
    • Hyper-V and Containers Windows features must be enabled
    • 64 bit processor with Second Level Address Translation (SLAT)
    • 4GB system RAM
    • BIOS-level hardware virtualization support must be enabled in the BIOS settings
    • For more information see here
    • Virtualized Windows environments that cannot run docker containers are not supported!
  • MacOS:
    • Mac hardware must be a 2010 or a newer model with an Intel processor
    • macOS must be version 10.14 or newer
    • At least 4 GB of RAM
    • VirtualBox prior to version 4.3.30 must not be installed as it is not compatible with Docker Desktop
    • For more information see here
  • Linux:
    • CentOS 7 or 8
    • Ubuntu Groovy 20.10, Ubuntu Focal 20.04 (LTS), Ubuntu Bionic 18.04 (LTS), Ubuntu Xenial 16.04 (LTS)
    • Debian Buster 10 (stable), Debian Stretch 9 / Raspbian Stretch
    • Fedora 32, Fedora 33
    • For more information see here

8.2 User System Requirements

This is up to you as user or to your users (if you are the sysadmin). The system should have a sufficient number of cores and memory to ensure adequate computational resources. Disk space should also be available in sufficient quantity. Specs that have worked well for us are:

  • Single user computers:
    • 1-8 cores (2-16 virtual)
    • 8-32GB of RAM
    • 128GB - 1TB SSD harddisk
  • Multi user computers:
    • 24-48 cores (48-96 virtual)
    • 128-512GB of RAM
    • 1TB SSD harddisk
  • Cloud:
    • Anything you want or need - taking the single user computer specs as minimum.

No backup on the host computer needs to be considered. The IQdesktop system is not supposed to be used as a storage system!