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Overview and requirements for HCMS Docker-based installation

Introduction

Note that although this guide describes one single container, it is common to run a cluster of there can be any number of Docker hosts, all running the same image with the same environment variables.

From the project life cycle point of view, this guide is meant for any project phase:

  • local installation for development purposes

  • remote or cloud installation for testing purposes

  • productive installation on a self-hosted server or a cloud-hosted server

Cloud installations are additionally described in more detail in a separate article, but the starting point is always the same, briefly described in the following two main steps:

  • preparing the censhare Server, i.e., creating the HCMS configuration on that server

  • building an HCMS Docker image and supplying it with correct variables that allow to connect to the pre-configured censhare Server

The current guide focuses on those two steps. It also includes only essential configuration to get containers up and running. Usually, you will need to perform some custom changes. They are described in a separate article.

Hardware and system requirements

The requirements are provided here for all involved components: First of all, HeadlessCMS does not make sense in isolation: you will need a running censhare Server to which you can connect. For the complete installation, you will also need:

  • a Docker host to run the HCMS itself

  • another machine to run the administration tool

If you do a local installation for development purposes, you can run the last two on the same laptop, indeed.

censhare Application Server

Version compatibility

The Headless CMS can be used with the censhare version 2017.1 or later.

Permissions

You need admin access to the censhare Server. The admin user must be a non-external system user, i.e., not in Keycloak, and must have sufficient administration permissions, including ability to create new assets in all domains, i.e., it should be in the root. domain.

Docker Host Infrastructure

Headless CMS containers should be run via Docker. Replacement implementations like Podman are not supported; although the container might work. It should also work with any hosting service that actually runs Docker. However, using any special limited configurations (especially security-tightened ones or those with custom networking), can break the functionality in several ways. In particular, the implementation expects network interface to be available.

Note that the Docker image is built on top of the official openjdk image. The content of this image (JDK, Linux libraries and tools) sometimes needs to be upgraded (usually due to security reasons). This can be done without a new Headless CMS version, but you have to monitor those updates by yourself.

System Requirements

Operating system

Debian 64-Bit-PC (AMD64), Ubuntu Server LTS 64-bit, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 64-bit, openSuse 64-bit, Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Servers 64-bit, CentOS (64-bit), Amazon Linux AMI

Docker

Docker CE or Docker EE, 2017.03 or later

Network

RMI Network connection (TCP) to the censhare application server must be possible

Available RAM

minimum 2.5GB per one container

Disk

minimum 500MB, SSD recommended

Command Line Tool

System Requirements

Operating system

Linux or macOS

Java

OpenJDK 11 (either PATH contains directory with java or JAVA_HOME is set)

Network

An RMI Network connection (TCP) to the censhare application server must be possible.

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