About Preinstallation Requirements

Important: To proceed with the installation or upgrade of Plant Applications Web Client, your deployment environment must be connected to the Internet.

Following are the details of the nodes and the pre-requisite software:

NodeDescriptionRequirements
1. Plant Applications database serverThis node will contain the Plant Applications database.
  • 64-bit Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, or Windows Server 2019
  • SQL server 2016 (64-bit), 2017 (64-bit), or 2019 (64-bit and with mandate Cumulative Update 4 installed)
For hardware requirements, refer to Getting Started Guide.
2. Plant Applications serverThis node will contain the Plant Applications server (that is, Plant Applications core, Message Bridge, and RabbitMQ)Refer to Getting Started Guide.
3. Apache CouchDBThis node will contain Apache CochDB, which is the document management store that is used by the Route Editor application to store documents.
Note: For more information on configuring CouchDB, refer to Configuring Apache CouchDB Settings.
  • 64-bit Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, or Windows Server 2019
  • Apache CouchDB 2.3.1
4. Operations HubThis node will contain the Operations Hub container running server. Beginning in Plant Applications v8.1, Web Client applications are hosted in an Operations Hub container.
  • 64-bit Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, or Windows Server 2019
  • Operations Hub
  • Operations Hub UAA
5. Web ClientThis node will contain the linux server on which you install or upgrade the Docker images for Web Client.
  • Ubuntu 18.x
  • Minimum 32GB of RAM
    Note: If you want to use a 64GB RAM, modify the .env file after installing Web Client.
  • An 8-core processor
  • A free disk space of 100GB
    Note: However, you may need more disk space based on your production data.
  • Docker Community Edition or Enterprise Edition 18.0 or later
  • Docker Compose 1.25.x
  • Docker Swarm initiated as Swarm Manager
  • Public Docker Images:
    • confluentinc/cp-kafka:5.1.2
    • confluentinc/cp-zookeeper:5.1.2
    • thomsch98/kafdrop:latest
    • confluentinc/cp-schema-registry:5.1.2
    • redis:5.0.7
    • eventuateio/eventuate-tram-cdc-mysql-service:0.21.3.RELEASE
    • haproxy:1.8
6. Local Docker RegistryThis node will contain Docker Images provided by GE. You will store and maintain the Docker Images so that the required images can be used on the node on which you want to install Web Client Docker containers.
  • Ubuntu 18.x
  • Docker Community Edition or Enterprise Edition 18.0 or later
  • Ensure that Docker Registry is running with volume mounting completed and the registry service’s URL is accessible from any node in the network. For information, refer to Create and Configure Docker Registry.
  • Public Docker Images:
    • hyper/docker-registry-web:latest
    • registry:2.4.1

7. Installer Node

This node will contain the Ansible-based installer. You can also run the installer on the Web Client node.
  • Ubuntu 18.x
  • Docker Community Edition or Enterprise Edition 18.0 or later
  • Ensure that PIP is installed and accessible to sudo user.
  • Ansible v2.9.10 (recommended). For more information, refer to the Upgrade to Ansible 2.9 section below.
8. Browser-Based clients This node will contain browser-based clients to access Web Client.
  • Google Chrome 80.0 or later
  • Ensure that this node is on the same network as the remaining ones.
Note:
  • You can combine the Installer node, Plant Applications Web Client node, and the Local Docker Registry node in to a single Linux server, especially if you want to upgrade to Plant Applications 8.1.
  • Except the proxy settings, all the shell commands that are required to install the pre-requisite software (including Ansible) are included in the Plant Applications Web Client installer. However, ensure you have Docker and Python Package installer (pip) installed on the Ansible node.
  • If you are using controller and performing a remote upgrade of 8.0 SIM2, then you must uninstall the docker-py module on the Web Client node before starting the upgrade process.
  • If your deployment environment is not connected to the Internet, you must have the necessary arrangement for installing the aforementioned components offline. For more information, refer to Install Web Client on Offline Systems.

Upgrade to Ansible 2.9

Perform below steps to upgrade to Ansible 2.9:
  1. Append below line to /etc/apt/sources.list file and save it.deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ansible/ansible-2.9/ubuntu bionic main
  2. Run the command sudo apt-get update.
    Note: You may run into an error if the NO_PUBKEY 93C4A3FD7BB9C367 public key is not available. In such case, run the following command:

    sudo curl -sL "http://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x93C4A3FD7BB9C367" | sudo apt-key add

  3. Now run the installer, it will install latest version of ansible