Prerequisites

Verify that your system meets the requirements listed below, and the detailed Support matrix in the ALM Octane Help Center.

For security requirements, see the ALM Octane Secure Deployment and Configuration Guidelines.

In this topic:

Checklist

Use the following questions to make sure you are ready to install.

Category	Tell us...	Your answer...
	On which machine are you going to install ALM Octane?
	Does the machine have a Quad Core AMD64 processor or equivalent x86-compatible processor?
	How much memory does the machine have?  You need a minimum of 8 GB.
	What Linux operating system is on the machine?
	What is the user name and password you are going to use for the installation user?
	Does the installation user have sudo permissions?
	Are your browsers and screen resolutions compatible with ALM Octane?
	On-premises installation of ALM Octane supports only English characters for the names of schemas, operating systems, users, and so on. Did you check?
	Does your Elasticsearch version match ALM Octane requirements? See Support matrix in the ALM Octane Help Center.
	Do you need to download Elasticsearch?  If you haven’t installed Elasticsearch, you can download from here: https://www.elastic.co/downloads/past-releases#elasticsearch
	On which machine is Elasticsearch installed?
	Did you make sure that the port for outbound communication to Elasticsearch is open?  By default, outbound ports are open.
	Did you make sure that the Elasticsearch ports (such as 9300 and 9200)  are accessible directly from the ALM Octane server, not just by checking the HTTP connection?
	What is the name of the Elasticsearch cluster you have configured?
	Is the Elasticsearch accessible from the ALM Octane server?
	Was Elasticsearch configured according to ALM Octane requirements? These are described in detail in Configure Elasticsearch.
	Does your Oracle version match ALM Octane requirements? See Support matrix in the ALM Octane Help Center.
	On which machine is the database installed?
	What is the Oracle database port? Default: 1521 You can modify the port in the connection-string field in octane.conf.
	Did you make sure that the port for outbound communication to Oracle is open?  By default, outbound ports are open.
	What is the URL for Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) for your database?
	What is the database admin's user name and password?
	Does the database admin power user have the necessary permissions? See Oracle database permissions.
	What table space and temporary table space can be used?
	Did the DBA add any objects to the schemas? If so, create an exception file before installing. For details, see Using exception files for manual database changes.
	Does your SQL Server version match ALM Octane requirements? See Support matrix in the ALM Octane Help Center.
	On which machine is the database installed?
	Are you going to use the SQL Server database port or instance name to connect to the database?  What is the SQL Server database port? Default: 1433 What is the SQL Server instance name?
	What is the database admin's user name and password?
	Does the database administrator (power user) have the necessary permissions? See SQL database permissions.
	What MSSQL database login user, and password, can be used for ALM Octane?
	Did the DBA add any objects to the databases/schemas? If so, create an exception file before installing. For details, see Using exception files for manual database changes.
	Do you need to install the JDK on the ALM Octane server and other servers, such as the ElasticSearch server?
	Does your Java version match ALM Octane requirements? See Support matrix in the ALM Octane Help Center.
	Did you make sure that the port for inbound communication with Jetty is open?  By default, the port is 8080. For SSL, 8443. You can define the port during initial installation, in octane.conf.
	Did you make sure that  ALM Octane can communicate between the nodes in the cluster, using inbound and outbound communication for clusters?  By default, the port is 5701. You can define the port during initial installation, in hazelcast.xml.

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File system permissions

• Root or sudo user.

• During deployment, ALM Octane creates a user and group named octane for running the octane service that starts the ALM Octane server. However, if your organization prefers to manage users in a centralized way, without enabling ad hoc creation of local users, create a user and group for this purpose, and define the following environment variables: OCTANE_USER and OCTANE_GROUP.

  Make sure the user has write permissions to the /opt/octane/log directory.

• If you are using Linux SUSE 15.4, make sure you have the sysvinit-tools package manager installed.

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Oracle database permissions

Permissions depend on how you want to install ALM Octane. Do you want ALM Octane to create schemas, objects, and tables during installation, or do you want your DBA to prepare them? 

Refer to the relevant section for your installation scenario:

• Allow ALM Octane to create Oracle schemas automatically
• Create your own Oracle schemas for ALM Octane

Allow ALM Octane to create Oracle schemas automatically

To enable ALM Octane to create schemas, tables, and objects automatically during the installation, provide ALM Octane with an Oracle power user with the following admin privileges:

• CREATE USER

• CREATE SESSION WITH ADMIN OPTION

• CREATE TABLE WITH ADMIN OPTION

• CREATE SEQUENCE WITH ADMIN OPTION

• DROP USER (optional). If not provided, the DBA must take responsibility for cleaning up unnecessary schemas.

This power user can also be created temporarily, for installation purposes only. You can remove this user if: 

• The installation is complete, and login to ALM Octane is successful.

• The ALM Octane site admin intends to create spaces using an existing schema, which can be selected when creating a space in the ALM Octane Settings area for the site. For details, see Manage spaces - site admins in the ALM Octane Help Center.

Create your own Oracle schemas for ALM Octane

If you do not want ALM Octane to create schemas, tables, and objects automatically, perform the following:

1. Before installation, create two schemas with the same password.

2. Provide ALM Octane with a regular Oracle user with the following permissions, for both the site and space schemas:

   • CREATE TABLE

   • CREATE SESSION

   • CREATE SEQUENCE

   • The QUOTA clause on the user's default tablespace should be unlimited.

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SQL database permissions

Permissions depend on how you want to install ALM Octane. Do you want ALM Octane to create databases during the installation, or do you want your DBA to prepare them? 

Refer to the relevant section for your installation scenario:

• Allow ALM Octane to create SQL databases automatically
• Create your own SQL databases for ALM Octane

Allow ALM Octane to create SQL databases automatically

To enable ALM Octane to create databases automatically during the installation, use the sa user, or an ALM Octane database admin power user.

Install ALM Octane with a database admin power user if you cannot use the SQL sa user for security reasons. This user can be a temporary user, for installation purposes only.

Request that the SQL Server database admin create a temporary power user with the following privileges (roles), which are required to install ALM Octane:

• Database Creators dbcreator role

• Security Administrator securityadmin role

It is important that the ALM Octane database administrative user is not the same as the ALM Octane admin user. The SQL Server database admin could name this power user octane_install_power_user, for example. For details on removing this temporary power user, see Handle database-related issues.

Create your own SQL databases for ALM Octane

Before installation, create two databases: one for the site and one for the space.

Associate the login user to ‘octane’ user in both databases.

The default collation is SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS (must be case-insensitive).

Use master
CREATE DATABASE <database_name>
GO
alter database <database_name> SET READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT ON
GO
CREATE LOGIN <login_name> WITH PASSWORD = 'thepassword' 
GO
USE <database_name>
CREATE SCHEMA [octane] 
GO 
CREATE USER [octane] FOR LOGIN WITH DEFAULT_SCHEMA= [octane]
GO 
ALTER AUTHORIZATION ON Schema::octane TO [octane] 
GO 
ALTER ROLE [db_ddladmin] ADD MEMBER [octane] 
GO 

Run the previous commands separately for each database (site schema and space schema).

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Configure Elasticsearch

Before installing ALM Octane, there are a number of settings you must configure in Elasticsearch.

Elasticsearch configuration

Before installing ALM Octane, configure Elasticsearch settings:

1. In the elasticsearch.yml file, configure the following:

   • cluster.name. Assign a unique name which is used when you configure ALM Octane to connect to the cluster. Note that even a single-server installation is considered a cluster.

   • node.name. If you do not assign the node a name, Elasticsearch generates a random name on every reboot.

   • network.host. The node binds to this hostname or IP address and publishes this host to other nodes in the cluster. You can enter an IP address, hostname, a special value, or an array of any combination of these. Defaults to _local_.

   • action.auto_create_index. In each of your Elasticsearch cluster nodes, you must have the following line in the elasticsearch.yml files:

     action.auto_create_index: "-mqm_*,*"

     Note: If you already have an action.auto_create_index line in the yml file, add the -mqm_* phrase to the beginning of its specified value. For example, if you have the following line: 

     action.auto_create_index: "-index*,*"

     You would change that to:

     action.auto_create_index: "-mqm_*,-index*,*"

2. You can configure Elasticsearch securely using TLS. For details, see https://softwaresupport.softwaregrp.com/doc/KM03712315.

3. In the jvm.options file, set the following parameters: -Xms<value>g and -Xmx<value>g.

   Define value as half of memory available on the machine – 1, but no more than 31GB.

Configuring an Elasticsearch cluster

Elasticsearch can run on a single node but it is designed to run as a cluster. We do not recommend running a production environment on a single host Elasticsearch instance.

Elasticsearch clusters should have at least 3 nodes, or a larger odd number. For details see https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/master/high-availability.html.

To configure an Elasticsearch cluster, modify the following parameters in the elasticsearch.yml:

• cluster.name. This name should be identical on all nodes of the cluster to make sure they join the same cluster.

• discovery.seed_hosts. To form a cluster with nodes on other hosts, use the static discovery.seed_hosts setting to provide a list of other nodes in the cluster that are master-eligible, and likely to be live in order to seed the discovery process.

Restart Elasticsearch

After changing Elasticsearch setting files (for example elasticsearch.yml or jvm.options), you must restart the Elasticsearch service.

For details on restarting an Elasticsearch cluster, see https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/guide/master/_rolling_restarts.html.

Backing up Elasticsearch

For details on backing up Elasticsearch, see https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/master/snapshot-restore.html.

We recommend performing ELS snapshot at the same time as database backup and file repository backup.

ALM Octane does not need to be stopped for this operation.

You can use curl to issue relevant snapshot commands. Also, consider creating a shell script to back up Elasticsearch data on a regular basis.

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Next steps:

• Deploy ALM Octane