Virtual Appliance Installation

Spectra Detect appliances are distributed as:

  • a hardware appliance

  • an Open Virtualization Format (OVF) package file with the .ova extension

  • an AMI (Amazon Machine Image)

Note

For AMIs, the default user (key) is rocky.

OVA instructions

Minimum required version: VMware ESXi 6.7

The virtual appliance provided in the OVF package already has open-vm-tools installed, and uses an E1000 network card and an LSI Logic Sas type disk controller to make it compatible with non-VMware deployments.

Users of VMware ESXi can import the OVF file directly according to the standard OVA import procedure as documented by VMware.

Note that VMDK files cannot be used as ordinary disk images. Please do not use them as disk images without the proper import procedure.

After importing the OVF file into a hypervisor, the following steps should be performed before the Virtual Machine (VM) is booted:

  • Set the VM base memory and the number of CPU cores according to the recommended setup specifications;

  • Configure the network adapter with a unique MAC address (this happens automatically on OVF import into VMware);

  • Connect the network adapter to an IP network with a running DHCP server.

Note that the network that the Hub is connected to should only have internet access if internet NTP servers will be used.

Ensure that the network interface MAC address is reset before starting the machine (this happens automatically on OVF import into VMware).

After starting the VM and booting the guest OS, the appliance will try to obtain an IP address using the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP).

Hardware Requirements

Hub

Minimal Setup Requirements

Recommended Setup Requirements

2 CPU cores, 2 GB RAM, 32 GB of SSD or NVMe type storage

4 CPU cores, 16 GB RAM, 80 GB of SSD or NVMe type storage
Worker

Minimal Setup Requirements

Recommended Setup Requirements

4 CPU cores, 16 GB RAM, 128 GB of SSD or NVMe type storage

≥ 16 CPU cores, 128 GB RAM, 4 TB of SSD or NVMe type storage

Installing Spectra Detect Hub in Dual-Node Deployment Mode

If a Hub is to be used in dual-node deployment mode (for redundancy and load balancing features), the provided OVF file should be imported twice. Follow the import process described in the previous section.

When asked to provide names for the virtual machines, make sure to give them names that make it easy to distinguish between the two Hubs.

For example, the names can be tiscale-hub-01 and tiscale-hub-02. In this scenario, tiscale-hub-01 will be set up as the master of the floating IP address, and tiscale-hub-02 will become the backup host of the floating IP address.

If resource pools are configured during the import procedure, make sure that both Hubs are allocated to the correct resource pool.

Additionally, both instances need to be on the same network to allow for the floating IP address to work with the vrrp protocol.

For more information about configuring Hubs in dual-node deployment mode, see the Cluster Configuration section.