Prerequisites and overview
Prerequisite
You must be able to install Java (Oracle JRE or OpenJDK) on the machine where you plan to run SonarQube.
Hardware requirements
- A small-scale (individual or small team) instance of the SonarQube server requires at least 2GB of RAM to run efficiently and 1GB of free RAM for the OS. If you are installing an instance for a large team or an enterprise, please consider the additional recommendations below.
- The amount of disk space you need will depend on how much code you analyze with SonarQube.
- SonarQube must be installed on hard drives that have excellent read & write performance. Most importantly, the "data" folder houses the Elasticsearch indices on which a huge amount of I/O will be done when the server is up and running. Read and write hard drive performance will therefore have a big impact on the overall SonarQube server performance.
- SonarQube and the SonarScanner support only 64-bit systems.
Support for 32-bit Java Runtime Environments has been dropped in all Sonar products. This drop affects all Sonar products: SonarLint (for all IDEs), SonarQube, and SonarCloud, including the scanners.
Enterprise hardware recommendations
For large teams or enterprise-scale installations of SonarQube, additional hardware is required. At the enterprise level, monitoring your SonarQube instance is essential and should guide further hardware upgrades as your instance grows. A starting configuration should include at least:
- 8 cores, to allow the main SonarQube platform to run with multiple compute engine workers
- 16GB of RAM For additional requirements and recommendations relating to database and Elasticsearch, see Hardware recommendations.
Supported platforms
Java
The SonarQube server requires Java version 17.
For the SonarScanners, the minimum recommended version is Java 17. Java 11 is deprecated as scanner runtime environment.
SonarQube is able to analyze any kind of Java source files regardless of the version of Java they comply with.
We recommend using the critical patch update (CPU) releases.
Java | Server | Scanners |
---|---|---|
Oracle JRE | 17 | 17 |
11 | 11 (Deprecated) Not compatible with SonarScanner CLI versions 5.0 and above. | |
OpenJDK | 17 | 17 |
11 | 11 (Deprecated) |
Database
Database | |
---|---|
PostgreSQL | 15 |
14 | |
13 | |
12 | |
11 | |
Must be configured to use UTF-8 charset | |
Microsoft SQL Server | 2022 (MSSQL 16.0) with bundled Microsoft JDBC driver. Express Edition is supported. |
2019 (MSSQL Server 15.0) with bundled Microsoft JDBC driver. Express Edition is supported. | |
2017 (MSSQL Server 14.0) with bundled Microsoft JDBC driver. Express Edition is supported. | |
2016 (MSSQL Server 13.0) with bundled Microsoft JDBC driver. Express Edition is supported. | |
2014 (MSSQL Server 12.0) with bundled Microsoft JDBC driver. Express Edition is supported. | |
Collation must be case-sensitive (CS) and accent-sensitive (AS) (example: | |
| |
Both Windows authentication (“Integrated Security”) and SQL Server authentication are supported. See the Microsoft SQL Server section in Installing the database for instructions on configuring authentication. | |
Oracle | 21C |
19C | |
XE Editions | |
Must be configured to use a UTF8-family charset (see | |
The driver | |
We recommend using the latest Oracle JDBC driver. | |
Only the thin mode is supported, not OCI. | |
Only |
Web browser
To get the full experience SonarQube has to offer, you must enable JavaScript in your browser.
Browser | |
---|---|
Microsoft Edge | Latest |
Mozilla Firefox | Latest |
Google Chrome | Latest |
Safari | Latest |
Platform notes
Linux
If you're running on Linux, you must ensure that:
vm.max_map_count
is greater than or equal to 524288fs.file-max
is greater than or equal to 131072- the user running SonarQube can open at least 131072 file descriptors
- the user running SonarQube can open at least 8192 threads
You can see the values with the following commands:
sysctl vm.max_map_count
sysctl fs.file-max
ulimit -n
ulimit -u
You can set them dynamically for the current session by running the following commands as root
:
sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=524288
sysctl -w fs.file-max=131072
ulimit -n 131072
ulimit -u 8192
To set these values more permanently, you must update either /etc/sysctl.d/99-sonarqube.conf
(or /etc/sysctl.conf
as you wish) to reflect these values.
If the user running SonarQube (sonarqube
in this example) does not have permission to have at least 131072 open descriptors, you must insert this line in /etc/security/limits.d/99-sonarqube.conf
(or /etc/security/limits.conf
as you wish):
sonarqube - nofile 131072
sonarqube - nproc 8192
If you are using systemd
to start SonarQube, you must specify those limits inside your unit file in the section [Service]
:
[Service]
...
LimitNOFILE=131072
LimitNPROC=8192
...
macOS
Same as for Linux: If you're running into maximum file limit issues on macOS, you can fix them by setting the file limit values by running the following commands:
sudo sysctl -w kern.maxfiles=131072
sudo sysctl -w kern.maxfilesperproc=131072
ulimit -n 131072
seccomp filter
By default, Elasticsearch uses the seccomp
filter. Make sure you use a kernel with seccomp enabled.
To check that seccomp
is available on your kernel, use:
$ grep SECCOMP /boot/config-$(uname -r)
If your kernel has seccomp
, you'll see the following:
CONFIG_HAVE_ARCH_SECCOMP_FILTER=y
CONFIG_SECCOMP_FILTER=y
CONFIG_SECCOMP=y
Fonts
Generating executive reports requires that fonts be installed on the server hosting SonarQube. On Windows servers, this is a given. However, this is not always the case for Linux servers.
The following should be ensured:
- Fontconfig is installed on the server hosting SonarQube
- A package of FreeType fonts is installed on the SonarQube server. The exact packages available will vary by distribution, but a commonly used package is
libfreetype6
FIPS
SonarQube will not run on Linux hosts where FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) is enforced.
Azure App Service not supported
While SonarQube is provider agnostic, some environments do not work well as platforms for a SonarQube installation.
The issue with Azure App Service is linked to the fact that SonarQube's Elasticsearch component runs bootstrap checks on values at startup. This includes the prerequisites for Linux platforms documented above. If the values are too low for any of these properties, the SonarQube startup will fail. These values need to be set on the host system, which Azure does not make possible for this service.
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