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Site CollectorSite Collector Administration Guide

Run Prechecks to Validate VM Configuration

To prevent disruption of installation or upgrade process of Site Collectors, the precheck binary file validates the VM configuration. Refer to the following sections that describe the procedure to download and run the precheck binary file and the components it verifies.

Download and Run the Precheck Binary File

To download and run the precheck binary file ngsccli, perform the following steps.

  1. Run the following command on your VM Command Line Interface (CLI) to download the ngscclibinary file located at:

    curl -o ngsccli https://storage.googleapis.com/ngsc_update/exa-cloud-prod/exa-ngsc/ngsccli
  2. Run the following command on VM Command Line Interface (CLI) to make the ngsccli binary file executable.

    chmod +x ngsccli
  3. Use the following command if you are installing Site Collector for the first time.

    # Install precheck
    sudo ./ngsccli precheck install
    # Help
    ./ngsccli precheck install -h
    Usage:
      ngsccli precheck install [flags]
    
    Flags:
          --enterprise            precheck with enterprise specs
          --extract-path string   path to extraction directory (default "/tmp")
      -h, --help                  help for install
          --install-path string   path to installation directory (default "/opt")
          --proxy string          proxy host:port (example - myproxy:3128

    or,

    Use the following command to run the ngsccli binary precheck file if you already have installed a Site Collector instance.

    # Install precheck
    sudo ./ngsccli precheck install
    
    # Upgrade precheck
    sudo ./ngsccli precheck upgrade
    
    # Help
    ./ngsccli precheck install -h
    Usage:
      ngsccli precheck install [flags]
    
    Flags:
          --enterprise            precheck with enterprise specs
          --extract-path string   path to extraction directory (default "/tmp")
      -h, --help                  help for install
          --install-path string   path to installation directory (default "/opt")
          --proxy string          proxy host:port (example - myproxy:3128

    Note

    • If you are installing a Site Collector instance for the first time, run the install precheck only: sudo ./ngsccli precheck install.

    • The following prechecks are not conducted during the Site Collector upgrade process.

      • Existing Site Collector Installation

      • Tmux Version

      • Available Disk Space

      • Ports

Components Verified by the Precheck File

The following table describes the components that the precheck binary file verifies.

Component

Verification

CPU Cores

The precheck binary file checks the minimum number of CPU cores available on the host system.

  • Standard: 4

  • Enterprise minimum cores: 16

Memory

The precheck binary file checks the minimum amount of RAM available on the host system.

  • Standard: 15.5 GB

  • Enterprise: 31 GB

HTTP Endpoint Reachability

The precheck binary file checks if the following required HTTP services are reachable.

  • https://www.googleapis.com

  • https://pubsub.googleapis.com

  • https://accounts.googleapis.com

  • https://auth.cloud.exabeam.com

  • https://storage.googleapis.com/exabeam-connectivity-test/go

Ports

The precheck binary file checks if the following required ports are available on the VM.

  • 8080

  • 8484

  • 8880

  • 8899

  • 9093

  • 9875-9879

Disk Capacity

The precheck binary file checks if the disk size requirements are fulfilled as follows.

Repository

For Standard Specification

For Enterprise Specification

/content_repository

200 GB

600 GB

/flowfile_repository

25 GB

75 GB

/provenance_repository

50 GB

150 GB

/var

50 GB

50 GB

/opt (or custom install path)

15 GB

15 GB

/tmp (or custom extract path)

10 GB

10 GB

Available Disk Space

The precheck binary file checks if the available disk space at the SXB extractions path /tmp (or custom extract path) is 8 GB. If the disk space is less than 8 GB, a warning message is displayed without preventing installation of Site Collectors.

Physical Disk Partitions

The precheck binary file checks is disks have physical partitions, and not logical (LVM) .

  • /content_repository

  • /flowfile_repository

  • /provenance_repository

Disk No Exec Option

The precheck binary file checks that disk is mounted without noexec option on /tmp (or custom extract path).

OS Version

The precheck binary file checks that the VM has the correct version of the operating system.

  • RHEL/CentOS: 7-9

  • Ubuntu: 18.03, 20.04, 22.04, 23.04, 23.10

Tmux Version

The precheck binary file checks if minimum tmux version 1.9 is available.

Jq Installation

The precheck binary file checks if the jq command is installed. The command-line JSON processing tool jq is a library that is required for processing JSON data for Site Collectors.

Docker Version

The precheck binary file checks if the minimum docker version 20.10.10 is available on the VM.

Docker Compose v2

The precheck binary file checks if the docker compose v2 is installed on the VM.

Docker-In-Docker

The precheck binary file checks if /.dockerenv file exists to ensure that docker is not being run from inside docker.

Existing Site Collector Installation

The precheck binary file checks if any of the following files exist to verify previously installed Site Collector instance.

  • /opt/exabeam/nifi/ngsc_db/actions

  • /opt/exabeam/nifi/ngsc_db/ngsc-upgrade-action

  • /opt/exabeam/nifi/nifi_conf/truststore.jks

The precheck binary file skips certain checks if there is an existing installation found.

User Access

The precheck binary file checks if the Exabeam user has sudo access which is required for installation.

Hostname

The precheck binary file checks if the hostname is not resolvable to loopback IP.

The hostname must not be bound to 127.0.0.1 or 127.0.1.1 also called as loopback IP. The hostname must resolve to a private external IP.

Time Tracking

The precheck binary file checks either chronyc tracking is normal or ntpstat works.