Creating a Portal Instance

Use the following workflow to install CTERA Portal on each virtual machine in a GCP environment.

1. Creating a Portal Instance.
2. Configuring a Default Gateway.
3. For the first server you install, follow all of the steps in Configuring the CTERA Portal Primary Server.
4. For any additional servers besides the primary server, configure the server as an additional server as described in Installing Additional CTERA Portal Servers.
5. Make sure that you replicate the database, as described in Backing Up the Database

To access the CTERA Portal disk image you must supply CTERA support with the email address you use to access GCP.

To create the CTERA Portal server instance in Google Cloud:

1. Log in to your Google Cloud Platform as a user with rights to deploy images and create virtual machines and storage.
2. Select a project from the Select a project drop-down.
3. Click Compute Engine > VM instances in the Navigation menu.
   Note: If the Compute Engine API is not enabled for the project, click ENABLE.
   The VM Instances page is displayed.
4. Click CREATE INSANCE.
   The Create an instance page is displayed.
5. Specify the portal virtual machine configuration.
   Name – A unique name to identify the portal virtual machine.
   Region – The location you want to host the virtual machine.
   Zone – The zone within the location to host the virtual machine.
6. Under Machine Configuration, select the Machine family and Series. CTERA recommends using the General-purpose family and the E2 series.
7. Under Machine type, select the Custom option from the drop-down and specify the cores and memory.
   Cores – The number of CPUs. In a production environment, with a multi-node deployment, the application and database servers each require a 64-bit virtual machine with minimum 4 CPU cores. In a small or test environment, with a single server deployment, the requirement is a 64-bit virtual machine with minimum 2 CPU cores.
   Memory – The machine RAM. In a production environment, with a multi-node deployment, the application and database servers each require a 64-bit virtual machine with minimum 16GB RAM. In a small or test environment, with a single server deployment, the requirement is a 64-bit virtual machine with minimum 8GB RAM.
8. Click Change under Boot disk to select the CTERA Portal image.
   The Boot disk window is displayed.
9. Click Custom images, and from the Show images from drop-down select the project supplied by CTERA support to choose the portal image.
10. Select the image from the Image drop-down.
11. For production, CTERA recommends changing the Book disk type to SSD persistent disk
12. Change Size (GB) to 110 and click Select.
13. Under Firewall, check Allow HTTP traffic and Allow HTTPS traffic.
14. Click the Management, security, disks, networking, sole tenancy link and click the Disks tab.
15. Click Add new disk.
16. Specify the following disk configuration.
    Name – A unique name to identify the disk.
    Description – An optional description of the disk.
    Type – The type of disk. For production, CTERA recommends SSD persistent disk.
    Size (GB) – The disk size. The minimum disk requirement is 110GB. When deploying a main database server to production, it is recommended to attach a disk sized 2% of the overall cloud storage you intend to allocate for the service. Prior to going to production, contact CTERA Support to evaluate whether the attached drive's performance meets CTERA's main database performance requirements.
17. Click Done.
18. Leave all the other settings with their defaults and click Create.
    The VM is created and powered on.Note the Zone and External IP address. The external IP is the address you use to access the portal.
19. Click SSH to log in to the virtual machine using the account SSH user and key and switch to root by running sudo -i.
    You have to configure the CTERA portal to recognize the storage datapool defined in steps 15 to 16.
20. List the disks to identify the name of the added disk.
21. Create the CTERA Portal logical volume from the disk:
    portal-storage-util.sh create_storage /dev/sdb
    where /dev/sdb is the disk for the portal data.A volume group and logical volume called DataPool are created.
22. Edit /etc/ctera/portal.cfg and add the Google Cloud Platform zone specified in step 5 as the value for the CTERA_GC_REGION parameter.
    # CTERA portal Google specific parameters
### Google Parameters ###
# CTERA_GC_REGION - Google Availability Zone
CTERA_GC_REGION=<*enterzonefromabove*>
23. start the portal server: # portal-manage.sh start
    The portal starts.