Requirements

On this page you will learn what are the hardware and software requirements to be able to use the MSP Challenge Simulation Platform.

All requirements are based on tests run on hardware available to us (BUas). It might be possible to run on older versions of Windows and on different hardware with lower-strength CPU and/or RAM. However, this has not been tested and is thus not supported.

We are continuously developing and testing the software, and thus will update this page as we learn and support more.

Client Requirements

Hardware

Operating System	Windows 10 (64-bit and up-to-date, at least version 1909), Windows 11 (up-to-date) or macOS (up-to-date, at least High Sierra 10.13)
CPU	Intel Core i5 6th+ generation, or comparable
Memory	8 GB RAM
Free Space	1 GB
Graphics Hardware	Not Necessary
Sound Hardware	Not Necessary
Networking	Cabled (UTP) or Wireless (WIFI), but as fast and reliable as you can get it

Software

No additional software is required, only the MSP Challenge client is necessary.

Server Requirements

Hardware

Operating System	Windows 10 (64-bit and up-to-date, at least version 1909), Windows 11 (up-to-date) or Windows Server 2016/2019 (up-to-date)
CPU	Intel Core i7 7th+ generation, or comparable
Memory	16 GB RAM
Free Space	50 GB (although highly dependent on how you use the server software)
Graphics Hardware	Not Necessary
Sound Hardware	Not Necessary
Networking	Cabled (UTP) or Wireless (WIFI), but as fast and reliable as you can get it

We recommend setting up a local area network using your own (Wifi) router to which your MSP Challenge server and clients connect. This gives you full control and reduces risks of e.g. network congestion or strict network security policies.

You can of course just use an existing local area network (cabled or wireless). See the the port usage notes below under Software.

The closer (in terms of network) the server is to the clients, the better the performance will be. In other words: try to avoid latency and lag (i.e., communication problems) by ensuring a fast and reliable connection between server and all its connected clients.

Software

We recommend that you run the full platform installer on a separate fresh Windows machine that's connected to your LAN or just somewhere on the Internet. Setting up the MSP Challenge Server on anything else (e.g. a Linux server) is technically possible to a limited extent, but not yet supported.

Beware that the following additional software will be installed when you run the MSP Challenge full platform installer:

• Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable
• Python 3.8.10
• XAMPP 7.4.25, specifically the Apache2 web server with PHP7 and MySQL (MariaDB), both of which are subsequently set up as Windows Services. Note that this also means that port 80 should be opened for outside connections. The MSP Challenge client will subsequently attempt to communicate on additional ports with high numbers, so ensure that this free communication between client and server is not blocked by default.

Finally, the full platform installer sets up a task in your Windows Task Scheduler to run every five minutes.

Note that the uninstaller only uninstalls the task set up in the Windows Task Scheduler. This means that if you wish uninstall XAMPP you'll have to do this manually after running the uninstaller of the full platform.

Peripherals

You will need to use a Keyboard and Mouse to navigate the client and server. While it is possible to use a trackpad, the experience will be severely limited by the limitations of such peripheral.