You are not required to use a specific level of hardware or operating system for WebSphere® eXtreme Scale.
However, for the official detailed list of supported hardware and software options by operating system for WebSphere eXtreme Scale, see the System Requirements page.
If there is a conflict between the information provided in the information center and the information on the System Requirements page, the information at the Web site takes precedence. Prerequisite information in the information center is provided as a convenience only.
WebSphere eXtreme Scale does not require a specific level of hardware. The hardware requirements are dependent on the supported hardware for the Java™ Platform, Standard Edition installation that you use to run WebSphere eXtreme Scale. If you are using eXtreme Scale with WebSphere Application Server or another Java Platform, Enterprise Edition implementation, the hardware requirements of these platforms are sufficient for WebSphere eXtreme Scale.
eXtreme Scale does not require a specific operating system level. Each Java SE and Java EE implementation requires different operating system levels or fixes for problems that are discovered during the testing of the Java implementation. The levels required by these implementations are sufficient for eXtreme Scale.
eXtreme Scale clients and servers running in a distributed environment and local in-memory ObjectGrids are supported on WebSphere Application Server Version 6.0.2 and later.
Other Java EE implementations can use the eXtreme Scale run time as a local instance or as a client to eXtreme Scale servers. To implement Java SE, you must use Version 1.4.2 or later.