Installing CTERA Content Services

Installation Prerequisites

• A new application added to the Microsoft Entra application gallery. For details, see Setting Up Content Services SSO.
  Note

  The access control set up for CTERA Content Services in Azure Entra ID should also be used for the CTERA Portal, so that the identities are aligned.

When Content Services is installed in an ESXi Environment:

• The latest ESXi CTERA Portal OVA file from CTERA Support.

When Content Services is not installed on ESXi:

• The CTERA Content Services deployment zip file, ctera-ai-deploy.zip, from CTERA Support.
• The latest release package, ctera-ai-release-.zip, from CTERA Support, for example, ctera-ai-release-1.18.0.zip.

Installation in an ESXi Environment

CTERA Content Services can be installed in a VMware vSphere environment, with the following:

• VMware ESXi 7.x or later.
• Access to the CTERA Content Services ova image file from the vSphere Host Client or Client console.
• CTERA Content Services can be managed in VMware vCenter and in VMware vCloud Director.

The latest CTERA Content Services ova file is available from CTERA support.

To install the CTERA Content Services using the vSphere Client:

1. In the vSphere Client console click File > Deploy OVF Template.
2. The Deploy OVF Template wizard is displayed.
3. Browse to the CTERA Content Services OVA file and choose it.
   
4. Click NEXT.
5. Continue through the wizard specifying the following information, as required for your configuration:
   • A Virtual machine name to identify CTERA Content Services in vCenter.
   • The location for CTERA Content Services: either a datacenter or a folder in a datacenter.
   • The compute resource host or cluster to run CTERA Content Services.
   • The virtual disk format for the CTERA Content Services software and the storage to use for this software. Refer to VMware documentation for a full explanation of the disk provisioning formats. Select either Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed or Thick Provision Eager Zeroed according to your preference.
     Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed – Creates a virtual disk in a default thick format. Space required for the virtual disk is allocated when the virtual disk is created. Data remaining on the device is not erased during creation but is zeroed out on demand at a later time on first write from the virtual machine. Using the default flat virtual disk format does not zero out or eliminate the possibility of recovering deleted files or restoring old data that might be present on this allocated space.
     Thick Provision Eager Zeroed – Creates a virtual disk that supports clustering features such as Fault Tolerance. Space required for the virtual disk is allocated at creation time. In contrast to the flat format, the data remaining on the device is zeroed out when the virtual disk is created. It might take much longer to create disks in this format than to create lazy zeroed disks.
   • The destination network that CTERA Content Services will use.
6. Review the configuration details and click FINISH.
7. Log in to the VM as ctera, using SSH or through the console.
   The default password is ctera321
8. Go to the ctera-ai-deploy-main directory using the command cd /data/ctera-ai-deploy-main
9. Edit the env.service_name file using a text editor like vi or nano.
   • Edit the following line: DOMAIN_NAME=<base_URL>
10. Change the directory to the /utils directory using the command cd /data/ctera-ai-deploy-main/utils
11. Run the script sudo ./setup-deployment.sh --domain <base_URL>
    Note

    Running this script takes several minutes.

12. Navigate to the data/ctera-ai-deploy-main/secrets directory and open the .secrets.openid file.
13. Add the following secrets to the file and save the file:

    OPENID_ISSUER
    OPENID_CLIENT_ID
    OPENID_CLIENT_SECRET
    OPENID_ADMIN_ROLE_ID
    OPENID_USER_ROLE_ID
    

14. Navigate to the project root: cd /data/ctera-ai-deploy-main/ctera-ai-nn where nn is the CTERA Content Services version, for example ctera-ai-1.14.0.
15. Run the following command: docker compose up -d and check that all the dockers are running.
16. Check that Dozzle, the web-based interface to monitor docker logs, is running and that all the services in the left column are marked green.
    • Use the following URL to check: http://<ip>:8080
      
      If any of the containers are not green, contact CTERA Support.
17. Sign in as an administrator, using the following address https://<ip>/admin/login
    
    The administration dashboard is displayed.
18. Sign in to CTERA Content Services and then perform the initial setup.

Installation in Another (non-ESXi) Environment

To install CTERA Content Servers in a non-ESXi environment:

1. Use SSH to access the Content Services VM and run the following command: sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
2. Install the dockers by running the following commands:

   curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
   sudo sh get-docker.sh
   sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
   newgrp docker
   sudo apt install docker-compose-plugin -y
   

   Where user is the username of the user logged on to the Content Services VM.
3. Install OpenSSL by running the following command: sudo apt install openssl -y
4. Login to the CTERA-managed Azure Container Registry: docker login -u <username>-readonly -p <password> cteraacrai.azurecr.io
5. Save the deployment zip file, ctera-ai-deploy.zip, to the Content Services VM in /home/usr/
6. Unzip the zip file using the command unzip ctera-ai-deploy.zip
7. Go to the ctera-ai-deploy-main directory using the command cd /data/ctera-ai-deploy-main
8. Copy the .env.service_name.example from the unzipped files to .env.service_name using the command cp .env.service_name.example .env.service_name
9. Run the command nano .env.service_name
10. Edit the env.service_name file using a text editor like vi or nano.
    • Edit the following line: DOMAIN_NAME=<base_URL>
11. Change the directory to the /utils directory using the command cd /data/ctera-ai-deploy-main/utils
12. Run the script sudo ./setup-deployment.sh --domain <base_URL>
    Note

    Running this script takes several minutes.

13. Change the directory to the /secrets directory using the command cd /data/ctera-aideploy- main/secrets and open the .secrets.openid file.
14. Add the following secrets to the file and save the file:

    OPENID_ISSUER
    OPENID_CLIENT_ID
    OPENID_CLIENT_SECRET
    OPENID_ADMIN_ROLE_ID
    OPENID_USER_ROLE_ID
    

15. Copy the release zip file to the ctera-ai-deploy directory and unzip it: unzip ctera-ai-release-<version>.zip
16. Navigate to the project root: cd ../..
17. Run the following command: docker compose up -d and check that all the dockers are running.
18. Check that Dozzle, the web-based interface to monitor docker logs, is running and that all the services in the left column are marked green.
    • Use the following URL to check: http://<ip>:8080
      
      If any of the containers are not green, contact CTERA Support.
19. Sign in as an administrator, using the following address https://<ip>/admin/login
    
    The administration dashboard is displayed.
    
20. Sign in to CTERA Content Services and then perform the initial setup.