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Requirements

Installation of ROCK can be broken down into three main steps:

1. Install
2. Configure
3. Deploy

Before that, let's cover what you're going to need before starting.

Sensor Hardware

The analysis of live network data is a resource intensive task, so the higher the IOPS the better. Here's the bottom line:

If you throw hardware at ROCK it will use it, and use it well.

Minimum Specs

RESOURCE	RECOMMENDATION
CPU	4+ physical cores
Memory	8GB RAM minimum, the more the better :)
Storage	256GB, with 200+ of that dedicated to /data, SSD preferred
Network	2 gigabit interfaces, one for management and one for collection

Install Media

• ROCK install image - download .iso here
• 8GB+ capacity USB drive - to apply install image
• BIOS settings to allow booting from mounted USB drive

Network Connection

ROCK is first and foremost a passive network sensor and is designed with the assumption that there may not be a network connection available during install. There's some built-in flexibility with deploying ROCK, and this will be clarified more in then next sections.

NOTE: Check out the ROCK@home Video Series that goes into detail on many things about deploying ROCK to include hardware choices for both sensor and network equipment.