Worker requirements
The floor a host must meet before the installer will proceed, and why each check exists.
These are the requirements vapn install checks before it does anything. They are
the floor to start. What a running worker actually consumes is much smaller, and is listed
under Installing a worker. The two lists are often
confused, and confusing them is how people conclude a worker needs half a gigabyte of memory to
send a ping.
The checks
| Requirement | Floor |
|---|---|
| CPU | 1 vCPU |
| Memory | 512 MB RAM |
| Disk | 2 GB free |
| Network | Outbound HTTPS only |
| Operating system | Linux with Docker |
Why each one
1 vCPU and 512 MB are the floor for the container runtime and the image, not for the workload. A worker sharing a machine with something else is entirely normal and is what most operators do.
2 GB of disk covers the image, the current target snapshot, and the upload queue. The queue is bounded: a worker that cannot reach the platform buffers its results and then starts discarding the oldest rather than filling the disk. A worker is never allowed to become the reason a machine runs out of space.
Outbound HTTPS only. Nothing listens. The worker opens connections to the platform on 443 and never accepts one, which means it needs no firewall change, no port forward and no public address. If your host restricts outbound traffic, see Network restrictions.
Linux with Docker. The worker ships as a container image. That is not an arbitrary preference: it is what makes the thing you run and the thing that was released verifiably the same artefact.
What a worker needs that is not on this list
The ability to send ICMP. The measurement is an echo request. A host that cannot send one, or whose provider silently drops them, will enrol successfully and then report nothing useful. This is not checked by the installer because it cannot be checked reliably from inside a container at install time, and it is the single most common cause of a worker that looks healthy and contributes nothing. See Worker connectivity.
A stable location. A worker on a machine that moves between countries, a laptop on a train, is worse than no worker: its measurements are attributed to a region it is no longer in. Workers belong on machines that stay put.
Was this page helpful?