Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN AppQoE Configuration Guide, Release 26.x and Later

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Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN AppQoE Configuration Guide, Release 26.x and Later

Disk recommendations for DRE

Updated: March 10, 2026

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Outlines disk recommendations for DRE and AppQoE, including using SSDs, configuring Cisco IMC RAID and caching settings before hypervisor installation, and choosing Thick Provision Eager Zeroed for virtual machine instances, with references for ESXi and KVM deployments.

Use solid-state drive (SSD) disks for deploying DRE and other AppQoE services. Configure these recommended Cisco Integrated Controller Manager (IMC) parameters before installing the hypervisor because some settings may require disk formatting.

  • RAID level: RAID10

  • Read Policy: Always Read Ahead

  • Disk Cache Policy: Disabled

  • Write Policy: Write Back Good BBU

  • Strip Size: 256 KB

  • I/O Cache Policy: Direct

Disk provisioning recommendation for Cisco Catalyst 8000V deployment

While deploying Cisco Catalyst 8000V instances, choose Thick Provision Eager Zeroed as the disk format. For information on deploying Cisco Catalyst 8000V instances on supported hypervisors, see:

Secondary disk recommendations for DRE

Recommendation: plan disk size before formatting

While deploying Cisco Catalyst 8000V instances, extra disk space is added after the basic system partitions are allocated under the /bootflash partition. If you need to increase the disk size, you must reinstall the instances to realize more usable disk space. The disk for Cisco Catalyst 8000V can be expanded at any time in the hypervisor; however, after the disk is formatted, the Cisco Catalyst 8000V cannot take the additional space.

  • Extra disk space is added after the basic system partitions are allocated under the /bootflash partition.

  • Hypervisor expansion alone does not increase usable space after formatting; reinstall the instance to realize a larger disk size.

Recommendation: configure disk parameters and attach the secondary disk during deployment

Configure the recommended parameters from Cisco Integrated Controller Manager (IMC) before installing the hypervisor because some settings may require disk formatting. For deploying Cisco Catalyst 8000V on AWS, Azure, or GCP platforms, include a cloud-init configuration and attach the secondary disk during deployment.

  • Recommended disk parameters by cloud:

    • AWS

      • Disk type: Throughput Optimized HDD (st1)

      • Disk size: 2 TB

      • Instance type: c5.4xlarge (16 vCPUs, 32 GB memory)

    • Microsoft Azure

      • Disk type: SSD Persistent disk

      • Disk size: 2 TB

      • Instance type: custom (16 vCPUs, 32 GB memory)

    • Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

      • Disk type: Premium SSD

      • Disk size: 2 TB

      • Instance type: Standard F16s_v2 (16 vCPUs, 32 GB memory)

  • For information about deploying a Cisco Catalyst 8000V on different platforms, see these resources:

Applies when deploying instances and planning secondary disk capacity where resizing is considered after formatting.

Applies when configuring IMC settings and deploying on AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform with a secondary disk requirement.

Because extra disk space is allocated after the basic system partitions under /bootflash, the instance cannot use additional space after formatting without reinstallation.

Configuring IMC settings before hypervisor installation prevents reformatting, and using the recommended disk types and sizes aligns performance and capacity with provider capabilities.

You avoid reinstallation and ensure that usable disk capacity meets requirements by planning the disk size before deployment and formatting.

Deployment completes with a correctly attached secondary disk and cloud-specific parameters that meet size and performance recommendations.

If you need more capacity after formatting, reinstall the instance to realize the larger disk size.

Use cloud-init to attach the secondary disk during deployment and follow the referenced platform guides for detailed procedures.