Datatex Virtual Machine Information

Voice recording ( Amethyst and iReCall )
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  1. Virtual server types
  2. New Installation
  3. Start up and shutdown steps
  4. Updates
  5. Copying or duplicating servers

1. Virtual server types

Currently supported version of Hypervisors:
  • Microsoft Hyper-V
  • VMWare

These have been used, but may require some advanced expertise from the customer / Support company side, since we didn’t configure the VMs.

  • Huawei Hosted Virtual Servers
  • Linux Native KVM

2. New Installation

  • Hyper-V requires more resources than a VMWare server. We recommend to use double the resources as a VMWare installation.

VMWare

This server will be a Ubuntu 64bit server installation. The current released OVA is on version 16.04 and will be upgraded to 18.04 as part of the installation.

We do not use 20.04 as yet.

  • Datatex provides an OVA file that is imported with DHCP enabled.
  • The default CPU and memory needs to be adjusted for the installation required.
  • Additional Hard drives should be added as required.
  • Datatex Support staff then need to connect to the server console to set the network details as required.
  • The OVA file is used for all the Datatex Products and the software configuration is changed as required by the support staff.

Hyper-V

We install Hyper-V servers from scratch using the Ubuntu ISO.
  • Currently we use the Ubuntu 18.04 server 64
  • Ensure that automatic updates are disabled.
  • The server is installed with only the OpenSSH software installed.
  • Do not use LVM partitioning.
  • The hard drive partitioning into three drives.
  • For sites with less than 50 users.
    • 50Gig for “/”
    • 50Gig for “/opt”
    • 150Gig for /mnt/drive2
    • 4Gig for swap
  • For sites with more than 50 users:
    • 100Gig for “/”
    • 100Gig for “/opt”
    • 300Gig for /mnt/drive2
    • 4Gig for swap
  • Make sure that the Hyper-V Linux kernel is installed. This will require a reboot of the server.
    apt-get install linux-azure

3. Start up and shutdown steps

We try to always install the VM specific kernel and vmtools to allow the VM to be controlled from the Hypervisor. This should allow the customer to shutdown and Start up the server using the Shutdown facility on their interfaces.

The servers are configured to automatically shutdown and startup the software running on them.
If there is a concern that some software didn’t start, please contact Datatex Support to assist to investigate.

Pausing servers

Ubuntu and Hyper-V doesn't seem to handle this properly. In the cases where this has neem tried, the server seems to enter a unresponsive state. The IP can still be pinged, but you can't login tot he server. Not even from the console. The server has to restarted from the Hypervisor dashboard.

4. Updates

Any change control and change timeslots that the clients require, needs to be taken into consideration. Server reboots should be done to reduce the chances of any recording down time.

Ubuntu updates

The Automatic updates must be disabled on the Ubuntu servers, to prevent updates that can break installations.

Ubuntu updates require the following Internet access:

  • DNS ( UDP port 53 )
  • HTTP ( TCP port 80 )

Proxy server can be used, if it is available.
In the command window where you are going to run the update, you can use the following command to add the proxy for this update session:

export https_proxy=http://user:password@serversip:serverport
export http_proxy=http://user:password@serversip:serverport

The first step is to update the list of packages:
apt-get update
Check and make sure that the files downloads. if it fails to download these files the update will also fail.
Next run the upgrade to download the files only. This will ensure that the files are kept on the server until you are ready for the upgrade.
apt-get upgrade --download-only -y
Once you are ready to do the upgrade you run the same command without the --download-only. The upgrade should get the files required from the previous download.
apt-get upgrade

Full Distribution Upgrade steps for preparations

Amethyst 2 Updates

The Amethyst 2 upgrades are now performed through the AutoUpdate software. This Datatex Software downloads the files from the Online servers a https://notifications.datatex.co.za.

This software currently does not support proxy access.
This software is automatically installed when you run the updatescripts.sh or getupdates script on a new server and it is not installed yet.

It is installed in:
/opt/datatex/autoupdate
When the auto update runs the first time it will create an INI file that contains an GUID that is linked to this server.
The /opt/datatex/etc/systeminfo.txt will require the MyAccount ID to be filled in to allow the correct server configuration to be downloaded.

Thereafter the software is configured on the MyAccount server page for the corresponding Internal IP of the server that this software is running one.

5. Copying or duplicating servers

Please note that the servers should not just be duplicated, since there are serial numbers and recording configuration that can cause loss of recordings, if not reconfigured after the server is copied.

The following change needs to be taken into consideration:

  • IP address of the server ( Duplicate IPs is never good)
  • MAC address should be changed ( duplicate MAC addresses is not good )
  • Recording references (If a recording is copied)
  • Licensing updates on the copied server. ( If the MAC / Serial changed the license may be invalid after the copy)
  • Remote license manager check (If an Amethyst server Copied)

If the server is not function properly after a copy/ duplication or replication, these are the items to check.