Deployment Planning

This guide outlines the configuration items and variables required to plan your Itential Automation Platform (IAP) deployment. Use this page as a template to prepare and package IAP for installation to your production environment.

Deployment Questions

Use the following questions to help define the conditions and requirements for building IAP before executing a full deployment.

1. Will you be deploying IAP in a clustered topology or in stand-alone topology?
2. Will you be configuring the VMs manually or using Ansible?
3. Do your labs have access to a proxy server that can provide Internet access?
4. Do your production servers have access to a proxy server that can provide Internet access?
5. Does your organization have internal NPM, yum, and Python registries accessible to labs and production servers?

Database Planning

Network

Gather the network IP and hostname assignments into this table. At least three DNS and NTP servers are recommended for high-availability.

	Environment Variable	Sample Value	DB-01	DB-02	DB-03
Hostname	HOSTNAME	db01
FQDN	FQDN	db01.pronghorn.io
Management Interface	MGMT_INTERFACE	enp0s3
Management IP Address	MGMT_IP_ADDRESS
Service Interface	SVC_INTERFACE	enp0s8
Service IP Address	SVC_IP_ADDRESS
DNS Server 1	DNS1	8.8.8.8
DNS Server 2	DNS2	8.8.4.4
DNS Server 3	DNS3
Timezone	TZ	America/New_York
NTP Server 1	NTP1	0.pool.ntp.org
NTP Server 2	NTP2	1.pool.ntp.org
NTP Server 3	NTP3	2.pool.ntp.org

Security Certificate

Use this table to track your security certificate details.

	Environment Variable	Sample Value	DB-01	DB-02	DB-03
Organization
Organizational Unit
Country
State
Location
Contact
Private Key Password
Certificate Request Password

Storage

This table will track the persistent storage required for the database servers.

	Environment Variable	Sample Value	DB-01	DB-02	DB-03
Data Disk		/dev/sdb1
Data Volume
Data Volume Size		500 GB
Data Volume Mount		/data
Data Directory		/data/mongodb

Database Security

This table will track the MongoDB database security parameters.

	Environment Variable	Sample Value	DB-01	DB-02	DB-03
MongoDB Port	MDB_PORT	27017
MongoDB Admin Username	MDB_ADMIN_USERNAME	mongoadmin
MongoDB Admin Password	N/A	****
MongoDB Itential DB	MDB_ITENTIAL_DB	pronghorn
MongoDB Itential Username	MDB_ITENTIAL_USERNAME	pronghorn
MongoDB Itential Password	N/A	****

Automation Platform Planning

Network

	Environment Variable	Sample Value	DB-01	DB-02	DB-03
Hostname	HOSTNAME	itential01
FQDN	FQDN	itential01.pronghorn.io
Management interface	MGMT_INTERFACE	enp0s3
Management IP Address	MGMT_IP_ADDRESS
Service Interface	SVC_INTERFACE	enp0s8
Service IP Address	SVC_IP_ADDRESS
DNS Server 1	DNS1	8.8.8.8
DNS Server 2	DNS2	8.8.4.4
DNS Server 3	DNS3
Timezone	TZ	America/New_York
NTP Server 1	NTP1	0.pool.ntp.org
NTP Server 2	NTP2	1.pool.ntp.org
NTP Server 3	NTP3	2.pool.ntp.org

Security Certificate

Gather the network IP and hostname assignments into this table. At least three DNS and NTP servers are recommended for high-availability.

	Environment Variable	Sample Value	DB-01	DB-02	DB-03
Organization
Organizational Unit
Country
State
Location
Contact
Private Key Password
Certificate Request Password

Itential Registry

A connection to the Itential registry is recommended to enable dynamic build environments.

	Environment Variable	Sample Value	ITENTIAL-01	ITENTIAL-02	ITENTIAL-03
Itential Registry URL	ITENTIAL_URL
Itential Registry CA File	ITENTIAL_CA_FILE
Itential Registry Username	ITENTIAL_USERNAME
Itential Registry Password	N/A

Itential Automation Platform Configuration

Use the following values to configure IAP.

	Environment Variable	Sample Value	ITENTIAL-01	ITENTIAL-02	ITENTIAL-03
Install Directory	ITENTIAL_HOME
Logs Directory	ITENTIAL_LOGS
HTTPS Port	ITENTIAL_HTTPS_PORT
Admin Group	ITENTIAL_ADMIN_GROUP
MongoDB Server 1	MDB_HOST1	db01.pronghorn.io
MongoDB Server 2	MDB_HOST2	db02.pronghorn.io
MongoDB Server 3	MDB_HOST3	db03.pronghorn.io
MongoDB Port	MDB_PORT	27017
MongoDB CA File	MDB_CA_FILE
MongoDB Username	MDB_USERNAME	itential
MongoDB Password	n/a	****
Proxy Server (Optional)	HTTP_PROXY HTTPS_PROXY	Refer to the Proxy Settings for Pre-builts section below.

LDAP

This table will help track the required LDAP configuration values.

	Environment Variable	Sample Value	ITENTIAL-01	ITENTIAL-02	ITENTIAL-03
LDAP User Filter	LDAP_USER_FILTER
LDAP Port	LDAP_PORT	389
LDAP Membership Attribute	LDAP_MEMBERSHIP_ATTR
LDAP Group Filter	LDAP_GROUP_FILTER
LDAP FQDN	LDAP_FQDN|ldap.pronghorn.io
LDAP Bind Username	LDAP_BIND_USERNAME
LDAP Bind Password	N/A
Additional LDAP Info
Active Directory	LDAP_IS_AD	false

Email

This table will help track any required email server configuration values.

	Environment Variable	Sample Value	ITENTIAL-01	ITENTIAL-02	ITENTIAL-03
Email FQDN	EMAIL_FQDN	mail.pronghorn.io
Email Port	EMAIL_PORT
Email Protocol	EMAIL_PROTOCOL
Email Username	EMAIL_USERNAME
Email Password	EMAIL_PASSWORD

Browser

Presently, IAP is compatible with the most current version of the following browsers.

• Chrome
• Firefox
• Microsoft Edge
• IE11

Proxy Settings for Pre-builts

Some network enviroments are set up to have a proxy between the IAP server and the Internet. For those environments, Itential provides proxy support for both HTTP and HTTPS.

To fetch available Pre-builts from the Itential OpenSource Registry with a proxy server:

1. Set the HTTP_PROXY environment variable in the session where IAP is started.

   Example

   export HTTP_PROXY=http://insecure-proxy.uat.domain.io:3128

   Example

   export HTTPS_PROXY=https://internal-proxy.uat.domain.io:3128

2. Optionally, set the username:password for authentication. If an authenticated proxy is not required, skip this setting.

   Example

   export HTTPS_PROXY=https://username:password@proxy.uat.itential.io:3128

3. Restart IAP to accept the settings.