DEPRECATED - REMOVE IT SmartGears gHN Installation

Introduction

As very well described in the dedicated gCube developer guide section, SmartGears is a set of Java libraries that turn Servlet-based containers and applications into gCube resources in a transparent way.

In order to achieve the goal of Software-as-resource and Container-as-resource infrastructure administrators and site-managers have been equipped with a bundle for the installation and management of the software needed to :

• enable any servlet-based container as a resource on the infrastructure
• enable any application running on the container as a resource on the infrastructure.

Prerequisites

The following are prerequisite for the installation of a SmartGears gHN:

• J2SE 1.6 update 4 SDK or greater. Sun's reference implementation is recommended, but versions from IBM, HP, or BEA should work equally well.

• GNU tar to install gCore from archived distributions.

• An existing installation of one of the available Servlet Containers

The following are pre-requisites for the operation of gHN in any infrastructure:

• A static IP address and preferably a DNS name.

Installation

The SmartGears gHN is available as archived distribution from the gCube Nexus Maven repository. ( link). Once downloaded the distribution can be expanded in any location of the filesystem. The distribution contains all the relevant files and in particular the install script, which performs the real installation of SmartGears within the servlet container:

usage:  install [-d <distro directory>] -s tomcat|<lib directory> -a [app directory] [-g gHN directory] [-x|-h] 

  <distro directory> = the directory with the distribution of SmartGears XXX.
                       By default, this is the parent directory of this script.
  <lib directory>    = the directory with libraries shared by all applications in the target container.
  <app directory>    = the directory with all the applications in the target container.
  <gHN directory>    = the directory with logs and files related to the gCube Hosting Node.
                       By default, this is value of the GHN_HOME env var.
  tomcat             = Sets <lib directory> and <app directory> for a target Tomcat container.
  x                  = dry run.
  h                  = shows this help.

Upgrade

In order to upgrade an existing SmartGears gHN installation the download script has been provided to contact the gCube Nexus Repository. The script is available from $GHN_HOME/scipts/download and it has this options:

usage:  download [-v <version>] [-o <folder>] [-s|-h] 

  <version>          = the version to download.
                     = By default, this is the latest known version.
  s                  = download a snapshot version.
  <folder>           = download to specific folder.
  h                  = shows this help.

Clean

The SmartGears gHN serialises locally on the disk the information published on the gCube Information system ( gHN and RunningInstance profiles), in particular:

• gHN profile is serialised within the folder $GHN_HOME/state in the file ghn.xml
• Apps profiles are stored within the folder $GHN_HOME/state/<app-name>/endpoint.xml

scripts are available in order to clean the state of the gHN ( both gHN and single app) and it quite useful in the case of reinstallation or development.

Clean gHN state

The script $GHN_HOME/scripts/clean-container-state can be used in order to clean the whole gHN state:

usage:  clean-container-state  [-g <ghn_home>] [-h] 

  <ghn_home>   = the gHN directory.
  h             = shows this help.

Clean App state

The script $GHN_HOME/scripts/clean-app-state can be executed in order to clean the state of a single app:

usage:  clean-app-state -a <app-name> [-g <ghn_home>] [-h] 

  app-name    = the application name whose state has to be cleaned
  ghn_home    = the gHN directory.
  h            = shows this help.

Configuration

Configuring the gHN

The configuration of the gHN that relates to its operation within the infrastructure and can be found in $GLOBUS_LOCATION/config/GHNConfig.xml. The file $GLOBUS_LOCATION/config/GHNConfig.client.xml can be used to dedicate a separate configuration to a gHN that operates in client mode.

The following gHN properties are available for configuration:

securityenabled	true if the gHN can operate in a secure infrastructure, false otherwise.
mode	either CONNECTED or STANDALONE depending on whether the gHN does or does not publish information in the infrastructure.
infrastructure	the name of the infrastructure in which the gHN operates. (e.g. gcube, d4science,...).
startScopes	a comma-separated list of VOs that the gHN joins.
allowedScopes	a comma-separated list of VOs that the gHN will potentially join (upon VO Manager decision).
labels	the name of the file that includes custom labels to characterize the gHN. These are added to those automatically derived by gCore and published in the gHN profile. The file name must be relative to the $GLOBUS_LOCATION/config directory.
GHNtype	either DYNAMIC or STATIC depending on whether the gHN can or cannot be used as a target for dynamic deployment operations.
coordinates	a pair of comma-separated values for the latitude and longitude of the gHN. Coordinates for some popular locations are available here.
country	the two-character ISO code of the Country where the gHN is located.
location	the name of the location.
publishedHost	the hostname to declare in the GHN and Running Instance profiles, if different from the actual one
publishedPort	the port to declare in the GHN and Running Instance profiles, if different from the actual one
updateInterval	how often the gHN must has to refresh its profile on the IS (in seconds).
portRange [optional]	a dash-separated pair of numbers that identify a range of free ports, if any.
testInterval [optional]	how often the monitoring Probes have to perform local test on the gHN

For example, the configuration required to join the gHN to the /gcube/devsec and /gcube/testing VOs is the following:

 infrastructure = gcube 
 startScopes = devsec,testing

For an in-depth coverage of scope and scope-related parameters (infrastructure and startScopes) see the Developer Guide.

Supporting resource encryption/decryption

If the gHN is foreseen to manage gCube encrypted resources, the AES symmetric key has to be downloaded and stored in the $GLOBUS_LOCATION/config folder.