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Prepare the Installation

System requirements

Disk speed

TrendMiner performs a lot of read/write actions on the disk hence it is important to verify that the minimal disk speed requirements are met.

The following commands can be used to measure the disk speed.

#create a test file in /run which we will write to /mnt/data
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/run/test.bin bs=1M count=1024 status=none

#write the test file to /mnt/data and measure the disk write performance of /mnt/data. This is the result to take into account.
dd if=/run/test.bin of=/mnt/data/test1.bin bs=1M conv=fsync 

#remove the test files again
rm /run/test.bin /mnt/data/test1.bin

The output of the second command in MB/s is the disk speed measured at that time. As this measurement is a snapshot of the speed at that time, there is no guarantee this speed can be met constantly. However, if this test reveal the disk speed is far below the minimal requirement the disk speed should be increased to avoid performance, installation or upgrade failures.

Disk type

To verify your disk is not rotational (like a HDD) execute the lsblk command. This should show a "0" in the RO column for the root (/) and /mnt/data mount points.

CPUs

Execute the lscpu command and verify that the "CPU(s)" listed is in line with the minimal system requirements.

Memory

Execute the free -m command and verify that the "Total - Mem" listed is in line with the minimal system requirements.

Prep the mount point

2 mount points are required: a root volume (/) and a data volume (/mnt/data).

The root volume contains system logs and services and should have 10GB[2] (or more) disk space.

The /mnt/data volume stores all TrendMiner application data and logs.

Important notes about the /mnt/data mount point:

  • Ensure that this directory has sufficient free disk space. If TrendMiner runs out of available disk space services will start failing leading to downtime for the users. Ensure that at least the minimal required disk space is available and keep in mind that as usage of the system grows, the available disk space might need to be extended.

  • Make sure /mnt/data is mounted to a non-volatile/permanent disk to avoid a broken TrendMiner installation after a server reboot. To make sure this is the case, create a dummy file in /mnt/data, perform a reboot and verify your dummy file is still available.

  • TrendMiner requires d_type support for the /mnt/data volume. To check this run command xfs_info /mnt/data/. In the resulting output you should see ftype=1. If ftype=0 the volume should be reformatted to support d_type.

The available volumes and disk spaces can be verified with the df -h command.

Root permissions

TrendMiner uses the root user to run commands (e.g. during installation and upgrades). The root user needs sudo permissions. To verify this is the case execute the sudo id command. The result should be uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)

Repository access

Access to the official OS repositories or a mirror of them is required. TrendMiner has no extra requirements when installing on a customer-provided CentOS 7 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 system outside of the software that is available in the official operating system repositories.

For CentOS7:

  • CentOS-7 - Base

  • CentOS-7 - Extras

  • CentOS-7 - Updates

For RHEL 7:

  • rhel-7-server-rpms

  • rhel-7-server-extras-rpms

  • rhel-7-server-ansible-2-rpms

To list all available repos on the system use yum repolist . TrendMiner will add another repo called tm-appliance during installation.

Important

If a mirror is configured for the official OS repositories it could be not all required packages are served by the mirror which could lead to failing installations and upgrades. In case of an error, please check which package is missing and make sure that package is available in your mirror.

To check which repos are configured, use the yum repolist -v enabled command and check the Repo-baseurl.

Examples of packages which could be missing in your mirror but are required by TrendMiner: ntp, fio, ...

Install Ansible

To install Ansible and be able to run the full installation procedure run the following command:

yum install centos-release-ansible-29 

Network configuration

Check IP address usage

Important

The TrendMiner appliance uses the following default IP addresses/ranges:

These IP addresses should not be used by other applications/servers/clients which need to connect to TrendMiner or to which TrendMiner needs to connect, e.g. IPs assigned to clients connecting to TrendMiner, an AD server configured in TrendMiner, a connector to which TrendMiner needs to connect, ... If your company is already using one or more of these IP addresses it is possible to change the IP ranges for TrendMiner. In this case please contact TrendMiner support before starting the installation.

DNS server

Make sure a DNS server is correctly configured. Verify the configured DNS server by executing cat /etc/resolv.conf. If a NetworkManager is managing your network settings, make sure the DNS config is not lost after a reboot by verifying the resolv.conf file still contains the DNS server after a reboot.

Other software

No other software should be installed on the server to avoid interference with TrendMiner.

Especially the installation of a virus scanner can cause performance degradation/deteriorated user experience and even failing installations or upgrades. Please contact TrendMiner support if your company policy requires the installation of a virus scanner.

Examples of virus scanner which are known to cause interference with TrendMiner are:

  • Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (sudo ps -ef | grep mdatp)

  • Trend Micro AV (sudo ps -ef | grep ds_agent)



[2] In theory the root volume should only have 5GB of disk space but since additional logging and monitoring can be configured in a self-managed appliance in practice this 5GB can run full in which case TrendMiner can go down.

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