Skip to main content

Deploy

info

Manually deploy to learn. Automatically deploy to scale.

Manual Deployment​

The following steps are meant to be followed on both servers. The following will be targeted to ubuntu servers.

Install HSTS​

Summary: Install Aspera HSTS from link below. Once installed, copy the binaries over to the hosts machines to be run and get Aspera installed.

Download Aspera High Speed Transfer Server (HSTS) binary here

Copy the following binary over to your two host machines via scp.

scp -i {vmHosts.pem} ibm-aspera-hsts-4.4.2.550-linux-64-release.deb {hostUsername}@{hostIpAddress}:/tmp

Install the binary by running the following in the /tmp directory.

dpkg -i ibm-aspera-hsts-4.4.2.550-linux-64-release.deb

Configure Aspera License​

Summary: Download your aspera license and transfer over to the hosts.

Run the following to transfer your aspera license over

scp -i {vmHosts.pem} aspera-license {hostUsername}@{hostIpAddress}:/opt/aspera/etc/aspera-license

To verify your license key, run the following command

ascp -A

Services Configuration​

Enable the following services for Watch Folders. The following command is provided below.

systemctl enable systemd-networkd
systemctl enable systemd-networkd-wait-online.service

Firewall Configuration​

Port 33001 must be opened for Aspera to run. You can open it by running the following below.

ufw enable # enables ufw
ufw allow 22/tcp # ssh port
ufw allow 33001/tcp
ufw allow 33001/udp

SSH Configuration​

To keep this minimal, we will be using password authentication for aspera sync. Thus PasswordAuthentication must be set to yes and to allow port 33001 act as an ssh medium. Make sure the following exists in /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Port 33001
PasswordAuthenticaiton yes

Make sure to restart SSH service once done by running

systemctl restart sshd.service

User Configuration​

For Aspera to work, we will need a transfer user. To simplify it, we will create a user called asperauser and make him into a transfer user in the next following step.

Create user asperauser​

adduser asperauser

Create 3 folders in asperauser's directory shown below. asperacontent folder will be used to sync between the two servers.

mkdir /home/asperauser/{asperaContent,asperaSyncLogs,asperaSyncDbdir}

Aspera Configuration​

Run the following to configure Aspera Sync.

asconfigurator -x "set_user;username,asperauser,absolute,/home/asperauser/asperaContent"
asconfigurator -x "set_user;username,asperauser,read_allowed,true"
asconfigurator -x "set_user;username,asperauser,write_allowed,true"
asconfigurator -x "set_user;username,asperauser,dir_allowed,true"
asconfigurator -x "set_user;username,asperauser,authorization_transfer_in_value,allow"
asconfigurator -x "set_user;username,asperauser,authorization_transfer_out_value,allow"
asconfigurator -x "set_user;username,asperauser,async_log_dir,/home/asperauser/asperaSyncLogs"
asconfigurator -x "set_user;username,asperauser,async_db_dir,/home/asperauser/asperaSyncDbdir"

Make sure to restart aspera by running the following

systemctl restart asperanoded
systemctl restart asperacentral

Aspera Sync​

To start the sync between both servers, run the following command on one of the server and target it to the other server by running the following

async -N asperaSync -d /home/asperauser/asperaContent -r {otherServerUsername}@{otherServerIpaddress}:/ -l 100M -a fair -g 1M -G 1M -C -K BIDI

You are able to read more of async commands by clicking here

Automated Deployment via Ansible​

Ensure that the inventory file is properly configured for your environment

Hosts validation​

You can verify that you can reach your host by running the following command inside the /resources/ansible directory.

ansible all -m ping

Do not proceed till you are able to verfiy the hosts

Running the playbook​

Before running the playbook, complete the following​

  • Place ibm-aspera-hsts-*.deb inside /resources/ansible/roles/install-aspera/files directory
  • Place 2 Aspera license inside /resources/ansible/roles/configure-aspera/files directory
    • AsperaEnterprise-license-primary
    • AsperaEnterprise-license-secondary

You can run the playbook by running the following. The playbook should take an average of 4 mintues

ansible-playbook playbook.yml