Alibaba

Installation requirements Alibaba

• Golden image with Hystax Acura (provided by request).

• Resources to launch a virtual machine disk created from the Hystax Acura Golden image:

  • 8 vCPUs,
  • 16GB RAM,
  • 200GB SSD disk.

• Resources to launch a virtual machine for the Hystax Cloud Agent. Created in each target / failover project:

  • 2 vCPUs,
  • 4GB RAM,
  • 20GB disk.

• SMTP server with TLS/SSL encryption.

• Security groups allowing the following traffic:

  • Hystax Acura host:

    • Ingress -- tcp/443,
    • Ingress -- tcp/4443,
    • Ingress -- udp/12201.

  • Hystax Cloud Agent (spawned automatically in the Target Project):

    • Ingress -- tcp/80,
    • Ingress -- tcp/15000.

Installation steps

Cloud configuration

1. Find the shared images in the cloud.

There should be two new images at the "Shared Images" tab: one for Hystax Acura Controller, and one for Hystax Cloud Agent.

2. Create a Security Group for Acura.

This SG should allow incoming traffic at the following ports:

• tcp: 22, 80, 443, 4443, 30080, 30081, 30082,
• udp: 12201.

3. Create an Acura VM.

Press "Create Instance" on the Acura's image and proceed through the wizard.

Required settings for the VM:

• A flavor with at least 2 CPUs and 8 GB RAM.
• Disk size should be at least 200 GB.
• Assign a public IP address with maximum possible bandwidth. This IP will be used to receive replication data.
• Choose the Acura security group you have created earlier.

Note

Adding a key pair during Acura's deployment is highly recommended to provide you with SSH access to the machine. Although Hystax Engineering team will be able to perform maintenance checks and troubleshooting (as long as the network is reachable and your security groups allow the corresponding traffic), it is better to have your own means of accessing the Acura instance. Please refer to Alibaba official documentation on using SSH public-private key pairs.

There is no need to create a Cloud Agent instance -- only Acura instance is required. Acura will spawn and remove Cloud Agent instances automatically.

4. Convert a Public IP to an Elastic IP for Acura instance.

Acura instance requires a fixed public IP.

Find your freshly created instance, click "More → Network and Security Group → Convert to EIP". This will make it a fixed IP that will not be released if the instance is stopped.

5. Pass Acura's initial configuration.

Pass Acura initial configuration

Once the VM is started, wait approximately 20 minutes for it to boot up, then open its EIP in a web browser. Please accept the certificate warnings so that you are redirected to the initial configuration page.

Step 1. Admin user creation.

Enter the organization name and new Hystax Admin User credentials into the Setup Wizard. This will be the user account for logging in to Hystax Acura Control Panel and managing the system. If there are any errors, the system will notify you.

Step 2. SMTP configuration.

Fill in your Hystax License key that was supposed to be shared with you in advance as well as the settings for accessing your mail server, which will be used to send notifications from Acura and generate periodic reports.

Warning

SMTP server with TLS/SSL encryption is required to proceed with deployment.

A sample notification will be sent to the specified "Test email" to verify the functionality when you click "Next".

Step 3. Target cloud configuration.

Fill in all the fields by providing cloud configuration details. Use question mark icons to get hints on the fields. After you click "Next", the Setup Wizard will validate the entered data and notify you in case of an error.

Detailed description of the fields.

Click "Next" to start cloud validation.

Step 4. Log in.

Once the validation is complete, click on the "Log in" button, and log into Acura Control Panel. Accept the certificate warnings if needed.

Congratulations, you are now ready to use Acura! Just enter the administrator username and password specified on the first step of installation in the login page of the solution.