Software and Hardware Requirements

This guide outlines minimum software and hardware requirements for deploying Mattermost. Requirements may vary based on utilization and observing performance of pilot projects is recommended prior to scale out.

Deployment Overview

Please see the Mattermost Deployment Overview documentation for a summary of software systems whose requirements are described in this document.

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View Mattermost Network Diagram

Software Requirements

Client Software

Desktop Apps

Operating System Technical Requirement
Windows Windows 7, 8.1 and 10
Mac MacOS 10.12+
Linux Ubuntu LTS releases 16.04 or later

Though not officially supported, the Linux desktop app also runs on RHEL/CentOS 7+.

* Integrated Windows Authentication is not supported by Mattermost desktop apps. If you use ADFS we recommend configuring intranet forms-based authentication for devices that do not support WIA.

PC Web

Browser Technical Requirement
Chrome v77+
Firefox v68+
Safari v12+
Edge v44+

* Support for Internet Explorer (IE11) has been removed in Mattermost 5.16. We recommend using the Mattermost Desktop App or another supported browser. See this forum post to learn more.

Mobile Apps

Operating System Technical Requirement
iOS iPhone 5s devices and later with iOS 11+
Android Android devices with Android 7+

* Integrated Windows Authentication is not supported by Mattermost mobile apps. If you use ADFS we recommend configuring intranet forms-based authentication for devices that do not support WIA.

Mobile Web

Browser Technical Requirement
iOS iOS 11+ with Safari 12+ or Chrome 77+
Android Android 7+ with Chrome 77+

Email Client

  • Desktop clients: Outlook 2010+, Apple Mail version 7+, Thunderbird 38.2+
  • Web based clients: Office 365, Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL
  • Mobile clients: iOS Mail App (iOS 7+), Gmail Mobile App (Android, iOS)

Server Software

Mattermost Server Operating System

  • Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04, Debian Buster, CentOS 6+, CentOS 7+, RedHat Enterprise Linux 6+, RedHat Enterprise Linux 7+, Oracle Linux 6+, Oracle Linux 7+
  • Using the Mattermost Docker image on a Docker-compatible operating system (Linux-based OS) is still recommended

While community support exists for Fedora, FreeBSD and Arch Linux, Mattermost does not currently include production support for these platforms.

Database Software

  • MySQL 5.6, 5.7, 8 (see note below on MySQL 8 support)
  • PostgreSQL 9.4+
  • Amazon Aurora MySQL 5.6+

Deployments requiring searching in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages require MySQL 5.7.6+ and the configuration of ngram Full-Text parser. For searching two characters, you will also need to set ft_min_word_len and innodb_ft_min_token_size to 2 and restart MySQL. See CJK discussion for details.

Search limitations on PostgreSQL:

  • Email addresses do not return results.
  • Hashtags or recent mentions of usernames containing a dash do not return search results.
  • Terms containing a dash return incorrect results as dashes are ignored in the search query.
  • If any of the above is an issue, you can either enable the Elasticsearch (E20) feature or install MySQL instead.

Search limitations on MySQL:

  • Hashtags or recent mentions of usernames containing a dot do not return search results.

MySQL 8 Support:

In MySQL 8.0.4, the default authentication plugin was changed from mysql_native_password to caching_sha2_password (https://mysqlserverteam.com/mysql-8-0-4-new-default-authentication-plugin-caching_sha2_password/). If you are using MySQL 8.0.4+, you will need to enable mysql_native_password by adding the following entry in your MySQL configuration file:

[mysqld]
default-authentication-plugin=mysql_native_password

Hardware Requirements

Usage of CPU, RAM, and storage space can vary significantly based on user behavior. These hardware recommendations are based on traditional deployments and may grow or shrink depending on how active your users are.

Moreover, memory requirements can be driven by peak file sharing activity. Recommendation is based on default 50 MB maximum file size, which can be adjusted from the System Console. Changing this number may change memory requirements.

For deployments larger than 2,000 users, it is recommended to use the Mattermost open source load testing framework to simulate usage of your system at full scale: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-load-test.

Hardware Requirements for Team Deployments

Most small to medium Mattermost team deployments can be supported on a single server with the following specifications based on registered users:

  • 1 - 1,000 users - 1 vCPU/cores, 2 GB RAM
  • 1,000 - 2,000 users - 2 vCPUs/cores, 4 GB RAM

Hardware Requirements for Enterprise Deployments (Multi-Server)

Scale Requirements

For Enterprise Edition deployments with a multi-server setup, see our scaling guide.

It is highly recommended that pilots are run before enterprise-wide deployments in order to estimate full scale usage based on your specific organizational needs. You can use the Mattermost open source load testing framework to simulate usage of your system: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-load-test.

Mattermost’s performance monitoring tools can be used for detailed performance measurements and to inspect the running system to ensure sizing and installation is correct.

System Requirements

For Enterprise Edition deployments with a multi-server setup, we highly recommend the following systems to support your Mattermost deployment:

  • Prometheus to track system health of your Mattermost deployment, through performance monitoring feature available in Enterprise Edition E20.
  • Grafana to visualize the system health metrics collected by Prometheus with the performance monitoring feature. Grafana 5.0.0 and later is recommended.
  • Elasticsearch to support highly efficient database searches in a cluster environment. Elasticsearch 5.0 and later is supported. Learn more here.
  • MinIO to support a cloud storage system compatible with Amazon S3. Learn more about file storage configuration options in our documentation.

Alternate Storage Calculations

As an alternative to recommended storage sizing above, you can forecast your own storage usage. Begin with a Mattermost server approximately 600 MB to 800 MB in size including operating system and database, then add the multiplied product of:

  • Estimated storage per user per month (see below), multipled by 12 months in a year
  • Estimated mean average number of users in a year
  • A 1-2x safety factor

Estimated storage per user per month

File usage per user varies significantly across industries. The below benchmarks are recommended:

  • Low usage teams (1-5 MB/user/month)
    • Primarily use text-messages and links to communicate. Examples would include software development teams that heavily use web-based document creation and management tools, and therefore rarely upload files to the server.
  • Medium usage teams (5-25 MB/user/month)
    • Use a mix of text-messages as well as shared documents and images to communicate. Examples might include business teams that may commonly drag and drop screenshots, PDFs and Microsoft Office documents into Mattermost for sharing and review.
  • High usage teams - (25-100 MB/user/month)
    • Heaviest utlization comes from teams uploading a high number of large files into Mattermost on a regular basis. Examples include creative teams who share and store artwork and media with tags and commentary in a pipeline production process.

Example: A 30-person team with medium usage (5-25 MB/user/month) with a safety factor of 2x would require between 3.5 GB (30 users * 5 MB * 12 months * 2x safety factor) and 17.6 GB (30 users * 25 MB * 12 months * 2x safety factor) of free space in the next year.

It’s recommended to review storage utilization at least quarterly to ensure adequate free space is available.