Installing Redis Enterprise Software

To install Redis Enterprise Software (RS), you must first choose the supported platform that you want to deploy on. In addition to Linux operating systems (Ubuntu, RHEL/CentOS, Oracle Linux), you can also deploy RS with:

• Amazon AWS AMI
• Docker container (for development and testing only)
• Pivotal Cloud Foundry
• Kubernetes

To access the installation package for any of these platforms:

1. Go to the Redis Labs download page.
2. Log in with your Redis Labs credentials or sign up for a new account.
3. In the Downloads section for Redis Enterprise Software, select the installation package for your platform and click Go.

In this article we walk you through the process for installing the RS installation package for Linux.

Prerequisites

• If you want to use Redis on Flash (RoF) for your databases, review the prerequisites, storage requirements, and other considerations for RoF databases and prepare and format the flash memory.

  To prepare and format the flash memory:

  Run:

  sudo /opt/redislabs/sbin/prepare_flash.sh
  

  This command finds all of the unformatted disks and mounts them as RAID partitions in /var/opt/redislabs/flash.

  To verify the disk configuration, run:

  sudo lsblk
  

• Disable Linux swap on all cluster nodes.

• Make sure that you have root-level access to each node, either directly or with sudo.

• When port 53 is in use, the installation fails. This is known to happen in default Ubuntu 18.04 installations in which systemd-resolved (DNS server) is running. To work around this issue, change the system configuration to make this port available before running the RS installation.

  Example steps to resolve the port 53 conflict:

  1. Run: sudo vi /etc/systemd/resolved.conf
  2. Add DNSStubListener=no as the last line in the file and save the file.
  3. Run: sudo mv /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.orig
  4. Run: sudo ln -s /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf
  5. Run: sudo service systemd-resolved restart

• Make sure that the OS is not using ports in the range that Redis assigns to databases). We recommend that you restrict the OS from using Redis ports range in /etc/sysctl.conf with `net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 30000 65535’.

Installing RS on Linux

After you download the .tar file installation package, install the package on one of the nodes in the cluster.

To install RS on Linux from the CLI:

1. Copy the installation package to the node.

2. On the node, change to the directory where the installation package is and extract the installation files:

   tar vxf <tarfile name>
   

3. To install RS, run:

   Note -

   • The RS files are installed in the default file locations. You can also specify other directories for these files during the installation.
   • RS is installed and run under the redislabs user and redislabs group. You can also specify a different user during the installation.
   • You must either be logged in as the root user or use sudo to run the install process.

   sudo ./install.sh
   

4. Answer the installation questions when shown to complete the installation process, including the rlcheck installation verification.

   Note -

   To install RS without answering the installation questions, either:

   • Run ./install.sh -y to answer yes to all of the questions.
   • Use an answer file to answer the installation questions.

   After RS is successfully installed, the IP address of the RS web UI is shown:

   Summary:
   -------
   ALL TESTS PASSED.
   2017-04-24 10:54:15 [!] Please logout and login again to make
   sure all environment changes are applied.
   2017-04-24 10:54:15 [!] Point your browser at the following
   URL to continue:
   2017-04-24 10:54:15 [!] https://<your_ip_here>:8443
   

   RS is now installed on the node. Repeat this process for each node in the cluster.

5. Create or join an existing RS cluster.

6. Create a database.

   For geo-distributed Active-Active replication, create an Active-Active database.

Custom installation directories

During the installation you can specify the directories for the RS files to be installed in. The files are installed in the redislabs directory in the path that you specify.

You can specify any or all of these file locations:

To install RS in specified file directories, run:

sudo ./install.sh --install-dir <path> --config-dir <path> --var-dir <path>

Custom installation user and group

By default, RS is installed with the user:group redislabs:redislabs. During the installation you can specify the OS user and group that RS is installed with and that owns all of the RS processes. If you specify the user only, then installation is run with the primary group that the user belongs to.

To install RS with a specified user and group, run:

sudo ./install.sh --os-user <user> --os-group <group>

Installation questions

During the installation process, you must answer a few questions to configure the node for your environment. These installation questions are:

• Linux swap file - Swap is enabled. Do you want to proceed? [Y/N]?

  We recommend that you disable Linux swap in the operating system configuration to give RS control of the memory allocation.

• Automatic OS tuning - Do you want to automatically tune the system for best performance [Y/N]?

  To let the RS installation optimize the OS for Redis Enterprise, answer Y. The installation process prompts you for additional information.

  The /opt/redislabs/sbin/systune.sh file contains details about the tuning process.

• Network time - Do you want to set up NTP time synchronization now [Y/N]?

  Redis Enterprise requires that all cluster nodes have synchronized time. You can either let the installation process configure NTP or you can configure NTP manually.

• Firewall ports - Would you like to open RedisLabs cluster ports on the default firewall zone [Y/N]?

  RS requires the node to have specific network ports open. You can either:

  • Answer Y to let the installation process open these ports.
  • Answer N and configure the firewall manually for RHEL/CentOS firewall.
  • Answer N and configure the firewall on the node manually for your OS.

• Installation verification (rlcheck) - Would you like to run rlcheck to verify proper configuration? [Y/N]?

  We recommend that you run the rlckeck installation verification to make sure that the installation completed succesfully. If you want to run this verification at a later time, you can run: /opt/redislabs/bin/rlcheck

Installation answer file

To avoid answering the installation questions during the installation process, you can prepare an answer file and use it to do a silent installation.

To install RS with an answer file:

1. Prepare the answer file with the answers to the installation questions.

   The answer file can contain any of the parameters for the installation questions and indicate the answer for the question with yes or no.

   For example:

   ignore_swap=no
   systune=yes
   ntp=no
   firewall=no
   rlcheck=yes
   

   Note -

   If you use systune=yes, the installation answers yes to all of the system tuning questions.

2. Run the install script with -c and the path to the answer file.

   For example:

   ./install.sh -c /home/user/answers