censhare server, database and tools requirements
Installation by censhare
censhare offers an installation service for censhare Server. If you plan to prepare a host and let censhare install the system software, ensure that the following requirements are fulfilled:
Proper IP setup
Proper DNS setup
SSH or VNC/RDP access
Working package management system
NTP setup
Hardware recommendations
To achieve a good performance, there are three decisive factors:
High memory bandwidth
CPU performance
Fast disk drives (SSD) for the embedded database (CDB)
We recommend current processor architectures with high memory bandwidth (e.g. Intel Ivy Bridge / Haswell) and a CPU speed of 3GHz or faster. Java parallel GC (garbage collection) is a good choice for fast GCs. For more information about garbage collection, see this Wikipedia article.
Calculate a minimum of 8 CPU threads for censhare. Large installations require more threads. Small installations can be run with fewer threads. The installation details must be calculated in the project planning phase. We recommend to calculate more CPU threads than are actually necessary for additional services like a local ServiceClient or Web Client. As guiding values, calculate a minimum of 8 GB RAM and 4 core (threads) CPU for a small demo or test system.
We recommend that files for the embedded database (CDB) are located on a separate mount point.
Virtualization
censhare with all components supports Solaris Zones and VMWare ESX version 5.1 or higher.
Java Development Kit (JDK)
The censhare Server requires Java Development Kit to be installed on the host. We recommend OpenJDK version 11, except for Oracle Solaris (x86 64-bit), which does not officially support OpenJDK. Oracle JDK 11 or other supported JDK 11 are recommended on this OS. Older Java versions are not supported.
Database
Postgres 15 is not compatible with censhare Server
You may use Postgres 14, but the last tested one is 13.1. (see table below).
| Oracle | PostgreSQL | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum version | 10cR2 | 9.6.3 |
| Tested version | 18 19 | 12 (censhare 2020.1 + 2020.2) 13.1 (censhare 2020.3) |
| Remarks | censhare supports all Oracle-certified Linux distributions (SE and EE). See Oracle notes 742060.1 and 756671.1. If you run your Oracle database in a virtual environment, see this Whitepaper before you start your installation. | censhare supports PostgreSQL on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (64-bit) , CentOS 7 (64-bit), Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Compatible distributions , SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (64-bit) and Oracle Linux (64-bit) . For a detailed installation manual see the PostgreSQL installation article or the official documentation . |
censhare Server
| Operating System | min. version | max. version | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (64-bit) | 7.x | 8.x | No standard installation packages are available. Installation packages may require some adaptations. |
| CentOS (64-bit) | 7.x | 7.x | Recommended installation. censhare Server was fully tested and installation packages are optimized for this OS. |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Compatible Distribution (64-bit) | 8.x | 8.x | No standard installation packages are available. Installation packages may require some adaptations. |
| Oracle Linux (64-bit) | 6.x | 7.x | |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (x86 64-bit) | 12.x | 15 |
censhare tools
The latest required tools versions can be found in the redistributed.txt of the censhare product/censhare Server folder of your deliverables.
| Component | Use | Required | Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud Gateway | Required to route the incoming requests from the web browser. | Mandatory | censhare-core-cloud-gateway-2.0.1-0.noarch.rpm |
| Static Resource Server | Distributes webpack bundles. | Mandatory | censhare-static-resource-server- 2.3.1-0 .noarch.rpm |
| webpack | Bundle static resources to serve them to the web browser. | Mandatory | Required bundles are provided in the download folder of your censhare version. |
| Google Cloud AI microservice | Provides Google Cloud AI analysis in censhare | Optional | censhare-google-ai-1.1.4-0.noarch.rpm |
| Social Media microservice | Required to publish content from censhare to social networks (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) | Optional | censhare-social-media-1.0.3-0.noarch.rpm |
| Mail service | Provides OAuth 2.0 modern authentication for Email service. | Optional | censhare-core-mail-0.4.4-0.noarch.rpm |
| Keycloak | Open-source identity and access management solution | Mandatory | v9 - v21.1.2 Recommended: v21.1.2 |
Note that Keycloak and webpack are not mentioned in the redistributed.txt. Keycloak is a third-party tool that is not part of the censhare product. The recommendation is to always use the latest version for security reasons. The webpack bundle version must match with the server release and is not distributed separately.
Use Postgres with Keycloak
We highly recommend using Postgres database with Keycloak. Although Keycloak declares to be compatible with Oracle, unfortunately, we cannot offer support for using Oracle with Keycloak.
In case you use an Oracle database with the censhare Server, you have two options:
- utilize it for the Keycloak data: in this case, you have to embrace the risk of using an incompatible database that we cannot support;
- set up a separate Postgres database for Keycloak: see Install Keycloak sysadmin and Upgrade Keycloak for more details.
Cloud services
The censhare Server or individual components can be installed on cloud computing platforms.
| Cloud platform | Components | Remarks | |
|---|---|---|---|
Amazon Web Services (AWS) | censhare Server | Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) | For more information, see Amazon Web Services . For the AWS regions, see this page . |
| Database | Amazon Relational Database Service (ARDS) with Oracle or PostgreSQL database | ||
| Asset file system | Simple Storage Service (S3) | ||
| Interface file system (hotfolders) | Elastic Block Store (EBS) | ||
| Microsoft Azure | censhare standard applications can be hosted and run | Azure Storage is only supported using Azure Files Storage . For more information contact your partner manager. | |