Agent requirements - AWS DataSync
Supported hypervisorsVirtual machine requirementsAmazon EC2 instance requirements

Agent requirements

In this section, you can find information about the requirements for an AWS DataSync agent, such as supported hypervisors and virtual machine requirements.

Supported hypervisors

You run DataSync on-premises as a virtual machine (VM).

DataSync supports the following hypervisor versions and hosts:

  • VMware ESXi Hypervisor (version 6.5, 6.7, or 7.0) – A free version of VMware is available on the VMware website. You also need a VMware vSphere client to connect to the host.

    Note

    When VMware ends general support for an ESXi hypervisor version, DataSync also ends support for that version. For information about VMware's supported hypervisor versions, see VMware lifecycle policy on the VMware website.

  • Microsoft Hyper-V Hypervisor (version 2012 R2 or 2016) – A free, standalone version of Hyper-V is available at the Microsoft Download Center. For this setup, you need a Microsoft Hyper-V Manager on a Microsoft Windows client computer to connect to the host.

    Note

    The DataSync VM is a generation 1 virtual machine. For more information about the differences between generation 1 and generation 2 VMs, see Should I create a generation 1 or 2 virtual machine in Hyper-V?

  • Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) – A free, open-source virtualization technology. KVM is included in Linux versions 2.6.20 and newer. AWS DataSync is tested and supported for the CentOS/RHEL 7.8, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS distributions. Any other modern Linux distribution might work, but function or performance is not guaranteed. We recommend this option if you already have a KVM environment up and running and you're already familiar with how KVM works.

    Note

    Running KVM on Amazon EC2 is not supported, and cannot be used for DataSync agents. To run the agent on Amazon EC2, deploy an agent AMI. For more information about deploying an agent AMI on Amazon EC2, see Deploy your agent as an EC2 instance to access in-cloud file systems.

  • Amazon EC2 instance – DataSync provides an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) that contains the DataSync VM image. For the recommended instance types, see Amazon EC2 instance requirements.

Virtual machine requirements

When deploying AWS DataSync on-premises, make sure that the underlying hardware where you deploy the DataSync VM can dedicate the following minimum resources:

  • Virtual processors – Four virtual processors assigned to the VM.

  • Disk space – 80 GB of disk space for installation of VM image and system data.

  • RAM – Depending on your configuration, one of the following:

    • 32 GB of RAM assigned to the VM, for tasks that transfer up to 20 million files.

    • 64 GB of RAM assigned to the VM, for tasks that transfer more than 20 million files.

Amazon EC2 instance requirements

When deploying AWS DataSync on Amazon EC2, the instance size must be at least 2xlarge for your AWS DataSync to function.

We recommend using one of the following instance types:

  • m5.2xlarge – For tasks to transfer up to 20 million files.

  • m5.4xlarge – For tasks to transfer more than 20 million files.

If you are running DataSync on your AWS Snowcone device, choose the default instance, snc1.medium, which provides 2 CPU cores and 4 GiB of memory.

Warning

We don't recommend using a DataSync agent running on an Amazon EC2 instance to access your on-premises storage, due to increased network latency. To transfer data between your on-premises storage and AWS using DataSync, deploy the agent as a virtual machine in your data center as close to your on-premises storage as possible.