Operating system requirements

The following operating system requirements must be met before installing the Unica Discover Network Capture Application.

The Unica Discover Network Capture Application (DNCA) is considered a network appliance software, like a network switch, that can be installed on a supported Linux™ platform. The software is designed to run in a dedicated environment to capture and process a high volume of network packets. As such, it is the only application software that must own the Linux™ server. It is not meant to be shared with any other general applications.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux™ must be installed before you begin installing Unica Discover Network Capture Application.

Supported operating system distributions for DNCA Builds

DNCA is compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux™ (RHEL) version 8.
Note: DNCA is also compatible with
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux™ (RHEL) version 7 (from version 12.1.0.3).
  • CentOS 8 (from version 12.1.1).

Depending on the type of operating system, more installation might be required. Review all of the following requirements.

Disable SELinux

Before you begin, SELinux must be disabled through the operating system for all versions of Red Hat Linux™. See DNCA installation requirements.

Disable iptables

On the Linux™ server hosting the Unica Discover Network Capture Application, please disable use of iptables. For more information, see Disable iptables.

Hyperthreading

Note: If the DNCA is hosted on a server that supports hyperthreading, do not disable it. It is enabled on most servers that support it and must be enabled for the Unica Discover Network Capture Application.

If you are using multiple instances of the DNCA, do not count the hyperthreaded virtual processors as available CPU cores. To calculate the maximum number of DNCA instances, count only the real CPU cores. See Multiple instances of DNCA.

32-bit Multi-Core O/S

For a multi-core system with a 32-bit operating system, the installation process automatically detects the additional processors and installs an SMP kernel to enable multi-core support. Physical Address Extension (PAE) support is included as part of the SMP kernel and supports up to 16 GB of RAM on a 32-bit operating system.

64-bit Multi-Core O/S

In a multi-core system with a 64-bit operating system, the installation process requires no additional kernels.

Note: The 32-bit versions of the required libraries must be installed from the installation disk of your 64-bit version of Linux™. See Required Packages.