Compatibility

The following matrices show the operability of Gremlin on various platforms. Following the compatibility matrices is a list of caveats for installing Gremlin on specific operating systems. At times Gremlin cannot be installed directly on an operating system due to mitigating factors such as dependency issues. In these instances, the matrix shows whether another means of deployment is available and has been tested, such as Docker. Note that the latest host updates should always be applied to the host before Gremlin is installed.

Linux

You can install Gremlin directly on these Linux distributions.

Containers

Containers like Docker can be used on operating systems where a direct install is problematic.

Windows

The versions and experiments supported on Microsoft Windows are:

Cloud platforms

Gremlin is designed to work on any cloud platform that provides Linux or Windows-based hosts. Gremlin has been tested on these platforms:

Caveats

Some platforms have limitations or require additional configuration. These caveats are listed below.

Ubuntu

The dependency apt-transport-https must be installed:

1sudo apt install apt-transport-https

Debian

The following dependencies must be installed:

• apt-transport-https
• dirmngr (Debian 9)

1sudo apt install apt-transport-https dirmngr

SUSE

The dependency libcap-progs must be installed:

1sudo zypper install libcap-progs

Amazon Linux 2

The dependency iproute-tc must be installed:

1sudo yum install iproute-tc

RHEL 8

The dependency kernel-modules-extra must be installed:

1sudo dnf install kernel-modules-extra

Fedora Atomic

Latency and Packet Loss experiments do not succeed due to an unavailable dependency:

• Tc Error: RTNETLINK answers: No such file or directory

Google Container Optimized OS (COS)

When running network experiments, Gremlin recommends using the latest version of COS. Prior versions of COS did not include kernel modules necessary to apply network impacts. For GKE users, the following minimum versions are recommended:

• 1.15.9-gke.17+
• 1.16.6-gke.5+

Windows

Azure Windows instances may throttle disk I/O such that large disk experiments will take an excessive amount of time to complete.

Client overhead

The Gremlin Agent that runs on the client requires very little overhead. Here are the needs in a couple of sample use cases.

Note: For information about network bandwidth usage by the Gremlin Agent, refer to Bandwidth usage.

Linux single-task host

The Gremlin Agent has very low performance overhead on a classic, single-task host. Our benchmarks for this type of host are based on an Amazon EC2 t2.micro:

• vCPUs: 1 vCPUs
• Memory: 1 GiB
• Operating System: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Debian agent instructions found here)

Linux Host DIY

May require elevated privileges

Linux Docker host

The Gremlin Agent has very low performance overhead on a host running Docker, with exact usage depending on the number of Docker containers your machine hosts, and whether those processes are long- or short-lived. Our benchmarks for this type of host are based on an Amazon EC2 t2.micro:

• vCPUs: 1 vCPUs
• Memory: 1 GiB
• Operating system: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
• Docker Client Version: 19.03.5-ce
• Docker Engine Version: 19.03.5-ce
• Number of containers: 1 container

For this type of Docker host, typical usage is

Docker DIY

May require elevated privileges

Windows single-task host

The Gremlin Agent has very low performance overhead on a classic, single-task host. Our benchmarks for this type of host are based on an Amazon EC2 t2.micro:

• vCPUs: 1 vCPUs
• Memory: 1 GiB
• Operating System: Windows Server 2019 Datacenter (Windows agent instructions found here)

Windows host DIY

The typeperf commands in the table below output each second. The -si option can be used to average over longer time periods. For example, -si 29:00 averages over 29 minutes.

Multiple typeperf counters can be included; just seperate them with a space.

Installing Gremlin

Once you've verified compatability, continue to Installing Gremlin to start the installation process.