Requirements

The following page lists detailed information on the supported server and browser platforms, recommended minimal CPU, RAM, and disk storage, and other requirements.

System and platform requirements

Posit Workbench runs on most modern Linux distributions and can be accessed in most modern browsers.

Platform Support

We recommend viewing our Platform Support page, which offers an in-depth overview of Posit’s Platform Support strategy and lists our supported operating systems and browsers.

Supported x86-64 Linux distributions

• RHEL 8 and 9
• Ubuntu Linux 20, 22, and 24
• Debian Linux 11 and 12
• SUSE Linux 15 SP5 / openSUSE 15.5

Linux systems and root privileges

Knowledge of Linux systems and root privileges at installation and runtime is required.

Privilege requirements

Posit’s professional products are designed to run R and Python code safely. The products take advantage of sandboxing and user impersonation. To seamlessly ensure safe execution for many uses, the products themselves have certain privilege requirements.

When run on server, Posit’s professional products typically install and run as root. When used in containers, some of Posit’s professional products require container privileges. The table below summarizes permission requirements for Workbench.

Location	Permission requirements
Server	Installation requires root, Workbench runs as root. Kubernetes Launcher must meet requirements1.
Docker	Requires root in the container. The Local Launcher can run in unprivileged mode Session containers (i.e., pods) run with Kubernetes Launcher do not require running in privileged mode.2

Recommended system requirements

• 4+ CPUs
• 8+ GB of RAM
• 100+ GB of disk storage

Information provided from our licensing vendor, Linux hardware should be from within the past 8-10 years. Hardware outside of that range may not be supported and therefore, none of the RStudio/Posit licensed products will work on older CPUs. Additional information is provided here.

Browser requirements

• Microsoft Edge
• Chrome
• Safari
• Firefox (version 126.0 or higher recommended³)

Network

By default, Posit Workbench accepts connections on port 8787 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS.

For additional information, such as configuring a custom port, see the Network Port and Address section.

Internet access requirements

If you are using VS Code, extensions cannot be installed without outbound access to:

• https://open-vsx.org

R & Python

R

• Workbench requires an installation of R version 3.6.0, or higher.
• We recommend installing multiple versions of R:
  • Review the Installing R for information about installing R and why we recommend installing multiple versions of R.

Python

• We recommend installing Python under all configurations.
• We recommend installing multiple versions of Python:
  • Review the Installing Python for information about installing R and why we recommend installing multiple versions of Python.
• If you choose to enable JupyterLab and Jupyter Notebook, Python is required.

Note

RStudio Pro and VS Code do not require Python. However, we recommend installing Python to provide users with the most choice.

Database Connectivity

Workbench requires database connectivity. In most cases, no additional configuration is needed; an SQLite database will be created and used automatically. However, if you are running a load-balanced setup, you must set up a PostgreSQL database for Posit Workbench to connect to before installation; if one is not configured, the service will refuse to start. See the Database section for more information.

User home directories

Workbench frequently interacts with user home directories. If you mount home directories with NFS, we recommend using the async mount option and a modern, high-throughput network connection that can support many simultaneous clients. If you’d like your users to be able to share their projects, see the section on Project Sharing for additional NFS requirements.

If you mount home directories with EFS, we recommend the following settings for the best performance:

• Use the general purpose performance mode rather than Max I/O mode.
• In most cases, you should use bursting behavior rather than provisioned throughput.
• Mount the file system using the Amazon package efs-utils.
• We recommend provisioning EC2 instances that are memory or compute-optimized (do not choose general purpose instances), and choose the network enhanced options, e.g., r5n.2xlarge.
• Use CloudWatch to monitor usage and identify system performance bottlenecks.
• Project Sharing must be disabled. For more information, see Project Sharing.
• File locking must use the advisory type. For more information, see File locking.

Note

You may experience slower performance in certain areas as EFS is not performant when reading and writing thousands of small files. For example, installing certain R packages with a lot of C++ header files or working with projects that require reading a large number of files.

Please refer to Using Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) with Posit Team for more details on recommended settings and configurations.

Footnotes

1. See Kubernetes cluster requirements for the Kubernetes service account access requirements.

2. See Kubernetes cluster requirements for the Kubernetes service account access requirements.

3. Workbench 2024.08 includes a bugfix (vscode-server#17 in the 2024.08 release notes) for potential data leakage between users in the same browser session. The fix uses browser functionality that, until version 126.0, was not implemented in Firefox.

   VS Code sessions will otherwise function in older versions of Firefox, which is why >= 126.0 is recommended, but not required. The caveat is that older Firefox versions may generate several harmless error logs in the browser console as Workbench attempts to use the unimplemented functionality: Error accessing Indexed DB: TypeError: indexedDB.database is not a function.