Installing ITA 9.1.1 and newer on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

[EcoStruxureIT]

Installing ITA 9.0.6 or 9.0.7 on RHEL 7? Go here

Installation requirements

We usually don't offer support on Red Hat installations as most of our customers who use RHEL have their own ways of installing and configuring it.

Prerequisite: Before starting the ITA installation procedure, make sure that the general system requirements for on-premise installations are fulfilled in addition to these:

• A server running RHEL 8.0 with at least minimum install selected.
  IMPORTANT: Installing ITA 9.1.0 on a Red Hat system is not supported. 

• Access to RHEL packages by using an active RHEL subscription

• Disk space:
  • /data is used for indexes and ETL configuration. Minimum size 5 GB.
  • /data/backup is used for backups. Minimum size 50 GB. Backups should always be mounted on a remote network share.
  • /opt/jboss-as is used for the application server. Minimum size 10 GB.
  • /var/lib/pgsql is used for the postgres database. Minimum size 30 GB.
  • /var/log is used for log files. Minimum size 5 GB.
  • /tmp is temporarily used for backup file creation and/or backup file restore job. It can also be temporarily used for server/ITA upgrade.
    IMPORTANT: This directory must be large enough to contain unpacked backup and server upgrade file(s). Calculate the minimum size as backup file size x 4 + 3 GB.
• Total amount of space recommended for an installation is at least 100 GB in addition to the operating system.

Changes to the system

The following system changes are applied during installation of the IT Advisor software.

• ITA will install the listed packages* if not already installed. 
  *You can get a list of dependent packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation through your local Schneider Electric contact. 
• Firewalld rules are set to ITA default locked down settings.
• The SNMPd configuration is replaced with a ITA configuration to provide SNMP status for the ITA services.
• The NTP configuration is changed to use default RHEL NTP servers. This can be changed afterwards through the server management interface (Webmin).
• The PostgreSQL configuration is replaced and certificates for the database get generated during install.
• SELinux is enabled.
• CTRL+ALT+DELETE reboot is disabled.
• Root login and UseDNS in SSH is disabled.
• TCP Keepalive settings are modified.
• Network memory settings are modified.
• logrotate has been configured to handle ITA and PostgreSQL logs.
• Loading kernel module ip_vs and ip_vs_rr.
  
• The Apache configuration is modified.
• The Webmin configuration is modified, disabling unused modules and changing security configuration.
• Enabling PostgreSQL start at boot.
• Maximum number of files has been increased to 100000 for JBoss (dcojboss) and root users.

Installing the IT Advisor server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

1. Download the installation file (ITAdvisor-<version no>.iso) from a location provided by the support team. To locate the telephone number for your region, visit Contact Us.
   Note: The below commands should be run withroot credentials.
   

2. Upload the installation file to: /tmp/

3. Create ISO mount point /tmp/iso

4. Mount the installer by running the command: mount -o loop /tmp/EcoStruxureITAdvisor-<version no>.iso /tmp/iso
   (where you replace <version no> with the 9.x.x version number)

5. Install additional repositories containing some perl packages required by ITA:
   sudo yum install --assumeyes https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm

   sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled codeready-builder-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms

6. Execute the install script: bash /tmp/iso/dco-install/install.sh

7. Un-mount ISO: umount /tmp/iso/

Non-mandatory creation of users and groups

During the installation process the setup script will automatically create these user accounts: dcojboss, dcoplat, postgres, and apache.

If required, these accounts may be manually added by executing these commands with root credentials prior to installation:

Add dcojboss user and group

groupadd --system dcojboss
useradd --system -g dcojboss --shell /bin/nologin --home-dir /opt/jboss-as -c "IT Advisor Application Server" --create-home dcojboss

Add dcoplat user and group

groupadd --system dcoplat
useradd --system -g dcoplat --shell /bin/sh --home-dir /home/dcoplat -c "IT Advisor Platform User" --create-home dcoplat

Add postgres user

groupadd -g 26 -o -r postgres
useradd -M -n -g postgres -o -r -d /var/lib/pgsql -s /bin/bash -c "PostgreSQL Server" -u 26 postgres 

The postgres package performs the above commands. Changing UID/GID is currently untested.

Add apache user

groupadd -g 48 -r apache
useradd -c "Apache" -u 48 -g 48 -s /sbin/nologin -r -d /usr/share/httpd apache

The httpd package performs the above commands. Changing UID/GID is currently untested.

Installing  IT Advisor clients

Prerequisite: The server installation has been completed.

1. On the computer where you want to install the IT Advisor client, open a web browser and launch to the IP address or hostname of the ITA server <serverIPaddress> to log in to the web client and get access to the desktop client download.
   (The ITA web client is automatically available with the server installation.)

2. If you're not an English speaker, select your preferred language from the profile menu Language option (profile image in the upper right corner).

3. In Administration > Licenses add your license keys to enable download according to your purchased licenses.

4. In the profile menu select Download Desktop Clients.

5. On the download page click to download the IT Advisor software according to your license and follow the instructions in the installation wizard.

6. Repeat the above steps on all client computers.