Environment Checklist for Milvus on Kubernetes

Before you install Milvus, check your hardware and software to see if they meet the requirements.

Hardware requirements

Component	Requirement	Recommendation	Note
CPU	Intel 2nd Gen Core CPU or higher Apple Silicon	Standalone: 4 core or more Cluster: 8 core or more
CPU instruction set	SSE4.2 AVX AVX2 AVX-512	SSE4.2 AVX AVX2 AVX-512	Vector similarity search and index building within Milvus require CPU's support of single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) extension sets. Ensure that the CPU supports at least one of the SIMD extensions listed. See CPUs with AVX for more information.
RAM	Standalone: 8G Cluster: 32G	Standalone: 16G Cluster: 128G	The size of RAM depends on the data volume.
Hard drive	SATA 3.0 SSD or CloudStorage	NVMe SSD or higher	The size of hard drive depends on the data volume.

Software requirements

It is recommended that you run the Kubernetes cluster on Linux platforms.

kubectl is the command-line tool for Kubernetes. Use a kubectl version that is within one minor version difference of your cluster. Using the latest version of kubectl helps avoid unforeseen issues.

minikube is required when running Kubernetes cluster locally. minikube requires Docker as a dependency. Ensure that you install Docker before installing Milvus using Helm. See Get Docker for more information.

Operating system	Software	Note
Linux platforms	Kubernetes 1.16 or later kubectl Helm 3.0.0 or later minikube (for Milvus standalone) Docker 19.03 or later (for Milvus standalone)	See Helm Docs for more information.

Software	Version	Note
etcd	3.5.0	See additional disk requirements.
MinIO	RELEASE.2023-03-20T20-16-18Z
Pulsar	2.8.2

Additional disk requirements

Disk performance is critical to etcd. It is highly recommended that you use local NVMe SSDs. Slower disk reponse may cause frequent cluster elections that will eventually degrade the etcd service.

To test if your disk is qualified, use fio.

mkdir test-data
fio --rw=write --ioengine=sync --fdatasync=1 --directory=test-data --size=2200m --bs=2300 --name=mytest

Ideally, your disk should reach over 500 IOPS and below 10ms for the 99th percentile fsync latency. Read the etcd Docs for more detailed requirements.

What's next

If your hardware and software meet the requirements, you can:
- Install Milvus standalone on Kubernetes
- Install Milvus cluster on Kubernetes
See System Configuration for parameters you can set while installing Milvus.