System Requirements

• Precautions
• Operating system
• Partition scheme
• Hardware
• Software
• Authority Level
• IP Addresses
• Installing DirectAdmin: How is it done?
• What Gets Installed?
• Need More Information?

Precautions

Please do NOT install services such as Apache, PHP, MySQL, Ftp, Sendmail, etc., as we will do this for you. All we need is a CLEAN install of your operating system.

We strongly do not recommend installing DirectAdmin on an existing live production server or on the server where any other Control Panel is already installed. DirectAdmin does not convert existing data upon install.

Operating system

Operating systems supported by DirectAdmin and expected End-of-life dates can be found here.

DirectAdmin supports the following Linux distributions:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
• Red Hat Enterprice Linux derivatives - CentOS Stream, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux.
• Debian.
• Ubuntu.

Running on the following hardware architectures:

• 64bit AMD and Intel architecture, also know as amd64 or x86-64.
• 64bit ARM architecture, also know as arm64.

Partition scheme

We suggest a simple partition structure of:

Partition	Size
/boot	500 MB
swap	2 x RAM but no more than 16 GB
/	Rest of drive

For a less simple partition structure:

Partition	Size
/boot	500 MB
swap	2 x RAM but no more than 16 GB
/tmp	1 GB.
/	6 - 10 GB
/var	8 - 20 GB. Logs, and Databases with CentOS
/usr	5 - 12+ GB. DA data, source code, mysql backups with custombuild option
/home	Rest of drive. Roughly 80% for User data. Mount with nosuid in /etc/fstab if possible.

Feel free to modify these numbers as needed. Debian store mysql databases in /home/mysql/.

Hardware

We highly recommend a processor of at least 500 Mhz even though DirectAdmin will run on slower systems. The more cores the better.

A minimum 4 GB of memory is required, with at least 4 GB of swap memory.

A hard drive with at least 2 gigabytes of free space (after the Linux install) is also required, not including any website data.

If you are expecting high traffic levels then you will need more memory, processor power, and hard drive space than we recommend here.

Intel and AMD should work fine. Solaris/Sparc will not.

Software

Please ensure SSH is installed and working.

The system kernel and filesystem must support quotas.

Authority Level

You must have root access on the server.

IP Addresses

At a bare minimum your server must have one static IPv4 IP address. However, for DNS control you will sometimes need at least two (2) IP addresses. With only one IP address you might be forced to use an external DNS service, depending on your registrar. -- this means web sites you create through the control panel will not propagate automatically.

DirectAdmin can be installed on a LAN using recommended auto mode.

Installing DirectAdmin: How is it done?

We will install DirectAdmin for you at no cost (free installs may not be included with bulk purchases). If you prefer to install DirectAdmin yourself, please refer to the DirectAdmin Installation Guide.

What Gets Installed?

Complete list of the 3rd party software which gets installed is listed in our main website.

Need More Information?

You can e-mail questions to sales@directadmin.com or send an inquiry by visiting the contacts page.

We are available Monday through Friday, 9 AM - 5 PM Mountain Standard Time.

You may also visit the forum to see if your question has been answered there.