Yugabyte Platform FAQ

What is YugaWare?

The Yugabyte Platform, previously referred to as YugaWare, provides built-in orchestration and monitoring for creating and managing YugabyteDB universes and clusters and can be used to deploy YugabyteDB in any public or private cloud.

How does the installation work for Yugabyte Platform?

YugaWare first needs to be installed on any machine. The next step is to configure YugaWare to work with public and/or private clouds. In the case of public clouds, YugaWare spawns the machines to orchestrate bringing up the data platform. In the case of private clouds, you add the nodes you want to be a part of the data platform into YugaWare. YugaWare would need SSH access into these nodes in order to manage them.

What are the OS requirements and permissions to run the Yugabyte Platform?

OS requirements

Only Linux-based systems are supported by Replicated at this point. This Linux OS should be 3.10+ kernel, 64-bit, and ready to run docker-engine 1.7.1 - 17.06.2-ce (with 17.06.2-ce being the recommended version). Some of the supported OS versions are:

• Ubuntu 16.04+
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5+
• CentOS 7+
• Amazon AMI 2014.03 / 2014.09 / 2015.03 / 2015.09 / 2016.03 / 2016.09

The complete list of operating systems supported by Replicated are listed here

• Permissions necessary for Internet-connected host

• Connectivity to the Internet, either directly or via a http proxy

• Ability to install and configure docker-engine

• Ability to install and configure Replicated, which is a containerized application itself and needs to pull containers from its own Replicated.com container registry

• Ability to pull Yugabyte container images from Quay.io container registry, this will be done by Replicated automatically

• Permissions necessary for airgapped host

An “airgapped” host has no path to inbound or outbound Internet traffic at all. For such hosts, the installation is performed as a sudo user.

• Additional requirements

For airgapped hosts, a supported version of docker-engine (currently 1.7.1 to 17.03.1-ce). If you do not have docker-engine installed, follow the instructions here to first install docker-engine.

• Following ports should be open on the YugaWare host: 8800 (replicated ui), 80 (http for YugabyteDB Admin Console), 22 (ssh)
• Attached disk storage (such as persistent EBS volumes on AWS): 100 GB minimum
• A Yugabyte Platform license file (attached to your welcome email from Yugabyte Support)
• Ability to connect from the Yugabyte Platform host to all YugabyteDB data nodes. If this is not set up, setup passwordless ssh.

What are the OS requirements and permissions to run the YugabyteDB data nodes?

Prerequisites for the YugabyteDB data nodes are listed here.

How are the build artifacts packaged and stored for Yugabyte Platform?

The Yugabyte Platform software is packaged as a set of Docker container images hosted on the Quay.io container registry and managed by the Replicated management tool. Installation of the admin console starts with installing Replicated on a Linux host. Replicated installs the docker-engine, the Docker container runtime, and then pulls its own container images the Replicated.com container registry. The Yugabyte Platform (YugaWare) then becomes a managed application of Replicated, which starts by pulling the Yugabyte Platform (yugaware) container images from Quay.io for the very first time. Replicated ensures that the Yugabyte Platform remains highly available as well as allows for instant upgrades by simply pulling the incremental container images associated with a newer YugaWare release. Note that if the host running the YugabyteDB Admin Console does not have Internet connectivity, then a fully air-gapped installation option is also available.

The data node software is packaged into the Yugabyte Platform application. Yugabyte Platform distributes and installs the data node software on the hosts identified to run the data nodes. Since it's already packaged into existing artifacts, the data node does not require any Internet connectivity.

How does the YugabyteDB Admin Console interact with the YugabyteDB data nodes?

The YugabyteDB Admin Console creates a passwordless SSH connection to interact with the data nodes. It needs to have the access key file (like a PEM file) uploaded into it using the YugabyteDB Admin Console. The setup on each of the data nodes to configure password-less SSH is documented here.

A REST API is also exposed by the YugabyteDB Admin Console to the end users in addition to the UI as another means of interacting with the data platform.

Would we have access to the database machines that get spawned in public clouds?

Yes, you would have access to all machines spawned. The machines are spawned by YugaWare. YugaWare runs on your machine in your AWS region/data center. If you have configured YugaWare to work with any public cloud like AWS or GCP, it will spawn YugabyteDB nodes using your credentials on your behalf. These machines run in your account, but are created and managed by YugaWare on your behalf. You can log on to these machines anytime, and YugaWare will additionally show you some stats graphed into a built in dashboard either per node or per universe.

How many machines would I need to try out YugabyteDB against my load?

You would need:

• One server to install the Yugabyte Platform on

• Minimum number of servers is as many data nodes as the replication factor. So just one server for replication factor 1, and 3 servers in case of RF=3

• A server to run the load tests on

Typically, you can saturate a database server (or three in case of RF=3) with just one large enough test machine running a synthetic load tester that has a light usage pattern. YugabyteDB ships some synthetic load-testers with the product, which can simulate a few different workloads. For example, one load tester simulates a time series or IoT-style workload and another does stock-ticker like workload. But if you have a load tester that emulates your planned usage pattern, nothing like it!

Can we control the properties (such as VPC, IOPS, tenancy etc.) of the machines YugaWare is spinning up?

Yes, you can control what Yugabyte Platform is spinning up. For example:

• You can choose if the Yugabyte Platform should spawn a new VPC with peering to the VPC on which application servers are running (to isolate the database machines into a separate VPC) AWS, or ask it to reuse an existing VPC.

• You to choose dedicated IOPs EBS drives on AWS and specify the number of dedicated IOPS you need.

In general, we are be able to fill the gaps quickly if we are missing some features. But as a catch all, Yugabyte Platform allows creating these machines out of band and import these as "on-premise" install.