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Lighthouse User Guide
2. Lighthouse overview
2.1 Lighthouse VM host requirements
To host Lighthouse, the VM needs to be configured to support a 50GB SCSI disk. As of Lighthouse 20.Q3.0,
a second NetOps disk is no longer required and is included as a part of the normal Lighthouse disk. Modules
will need to be synchronized with the latest version from Dockerhub, or updated using the offline installer.
• Lighthouse deploys as an application running in a Linux-based virtual machine (VM). The
Lighthouse binary is available in open (for VM managers such as Boxes, KVM, and VirtualBox),
VMware and Hyper-V specific Virtual Machine formats, image format. Lighthouse can also be run
through cloud hosting services including Amazon’s AWS, and Microsoft Azure.
• To run a Lighthouse VM, the host computer must be able to run a VM manager and at least one full
64-bit Linux-based virtual machine.
• To host Lighthouse, the VM needs to be configured to support:
o 50GB SCSI disk. (This can be expanded or reduced after installation and first run)
o 1 x network interface card, preferably paravirtualised (virtio, vmxnet3), Realtek rtl8139, or
Intel e1000 are also supported, bridged.
o VGA console for initial setup.
To dimension CPU and RAM resources, follow these guidelines:
CPU and RAM utilization increase with the number of enrolled nodes.
For small deployments (Up to 500 nodes), allocate:
• 2 x 64-bit CPU cores.
• 8GB RAM.
For medium deployments (between 500 and 1000 nodes), allocate:
• 4 x 64-bit CPU cores.
• 16GB RAM.
For large deployments (more than 1000), allocate:
• 4 x 64-bit CPU cores.
• 32GB RAM.
For large deployments, please contact us for guidance on the deployment options, including low and zero-
touch enrollment. The performance and limitations are dependent on network deployment.
Additionally, Lighthouse VPN keepalive timeout needs to be modified according to the size of deployment.
2.2 Lighthouse architecture
Lighthouse provides a platform for centrally accessing, managing, and monitoring Opengear console
servers.
Console servers connect to a central Lighthouse instance over an OpenVPN tunnel, and are accessed,
managed, and monitored via services transported over the VPN tunnel. In Lighthouse terminology, the
console server is referred to as the node.