censhare server, database and tools requirements
Hardware and software requirements for censhare Server, the database and censhare tools for censhare versions.
CentOS will reach its end of life on June 30, 2024. Alma Linux 9 is a new officially recommended OS for the censhare Server. Please upgrade accordingly.
There are two possible migration paths:
Recommended: Back up your existing VM, get a new one with Alma Linux 9, and set up your system based on the backup;
Upgrade your VM from CentOS to Alma Linux directly, following those instructions from the third-party provider. Pay attention to the fact that you will need to upgrade to Alma Linux 8 first; there is no straightforward way to upgrade from CentOS 7 to Alma Linux 9.
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 and a CPU speed of 3GHz or faster. Java G1 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 the following to be installed on the host:
Java 17 is required starting from the censhare version 2022.2
Java 11 is required starting from the censhare version 2019.2
Older Java versions are not supported.
a Java Development Kit; for both Java versions, we recommend JDK Amazon Corretto.
Other JDK distributions, mainly OpenJDKs, should work as well. The exception is Oracle Solaris (x86 64-bit) which does not officially support OpenJDK. Amazon Corretto JDK doesn't exists for Solaris. Oracle JDK or other supported JDK are recommended for this OS.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
Alma Linux | 9 | 9 | Recommended installation. |
|
|
|
|
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (64-bit) | 7.x | 8.x | No standard installation packages are available. Installation packages may require some adaptations. |
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Compatible Distribution (64-bit) | 8.x | 8.x | |
Oracle Linux (64-bit) | 6.x | 8.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 file in the censhare product/censhare Server folder of your deliverables.
Component | Use | Required | Version |
|---|---|---|---|
Keycloak | Open-source identity and access management solution | Mandatory | 21.1.2 |
Cloud Gateway | Required to route the incoming requests from the web browser. | Mandatory |
|
Static Resource Server | Distributes webpack bundles. | Mandatory |
|
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 |
|
Social Media microservice | Required to publish content from censhare to social networks (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) | Optional |
|
Mail service | Provides OAuth 2.0 modern authentication for Email service. | Optional |
|
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 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. | |