Installation Requirements
What your Kubernetes cluster, database, object storage, and network must provide before you install FOSSA on-premises.
Overview
Before installing FOSSA Enterprise into your Kubernetes cluster, make sure your infrastructure meets the requirements below. The FOSSA application runs inside your cluster and depends on two external services: an S3-compatible object storage backend and a Postgres-compatible SQL database.
Choosing your hosting model
For both object storage and the database, you can either self-host the dependency in-cluster or use managed external hosting (Amazon S3 and Amazon RDS, or equivalents). FOSSA ships with self-hosted options (MinIO for object storage and in-cluster Postgres) but they require extra CPU, memory, and disk in your cluster.
Warning
We strongly recommend managed external hosting for both the object storage backend (Amazon S3 or equivalent) and the database (Amazon RDS or equivalent). The self-hosted options are suitable only for proof-of-concept deployments, not for production.
Recent fossa-core chart versions (6.x) have removed in-cluster Postgres provisioning and decoupled MinIO from the chart. If you self-host today, plan your migration with Migrating to Postgres 17 and Decoupling MinIO from fossa-core.
FOSSA image credentials
To download the FOSSA application images, you'll need a username and password. Contact your FOSSA account manager to get these credentials.
Kubernetes cluster
| Requirement | Minimum |
|---|---|
| Kubernetes | 1.29 or newer (we recommend 1.35 as of May 30, 2026) |
kubectl | Compatible with your cluster |
helm | 3.11.0 or newer |
| CPU | 32 vCPU |
| Memory | 64 GB |
| Storage | 500 GB available |
To use the simplified charts, your cluster also needs dynamic volume provisioning and an ingress controller.
Database
| Requirement | Value |
|---|---|
| Postgres | 17 or newer |
| CPU | 4 vCPU |
| Memory | 8 GB |
| Storage | 200 GB available |
If you self-host Postgres, FOSSA's database image sets up the correct Postgres version for you. Add these resources to your cluster's requirements instead.
S3-compatible object storage
If you're using managed external hosting, your storage host should provide:
| Requirement | Value |
|---|---|
| CPU | 2 vCPU |
| Memory | 4 GB |
| Storage | 500 GB available |
If you self-host object storage, add these resources to your cluster's requirements.
FOSSA sends user invites, notifications, and other transactional emails over SMTP. You'll need to provide an SMTP server for FOSSA to send mail through.
Networking
FOSSA needs access to the following ports:
| Direction | Port(s) | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Inbound | 443 (HTTPS) | Users access FOSSA |
| Outbound | 22 (SSH), 80 (HTTP), 443 (HTTPS), all required | Access public package registries, download code for analysis, integrate with other tools |
| Outbound | 25 / 465 / 587 (SMTP, pick one) | Send email over SMTP |
| Outbound | 5432 (Postgres) | Connect to Postgres when using managed external hosting |
DNS and SSL
Once FOSSA is installed, configure DNS so users can reach it:
- Add a DNS entry for the FOSSA web application.
- If you self-host object storage, add a DNS entry for the self-hosted MinIO instance too.
If you terminate SSL at the FOSSA application, you'll also need SSL certificates for each domain name, one for the web application, and one for object storage if you self-host it.
Self-signed certificates
If your network uses self-signed certificates, FOSSA can be configured to trust them. Have these certificates ready to reference during configuration. See Trusting self-signed certificates in the install guide.
Next step
Once your infrastructure is ready, start the installation guide.