Production Environment Installation

This topic describes how to set up Release in a production environment. It describes how to configure the product, environment, and server resources to get the most out of the product. This document is structured in three sections:

• Preparation: Describes the prerequisites for the prescribed Release setup.
• Installation: Covers setup and configuration procedures for each of the components.
• Administration and Operation Provides an overview of best practices to maintain and administer the system once it is in production.

important

The correct configuration of I/O subsystems, such as: database, file system, network, is critical for the optimal performance and operation of Release. This guide provides best practices and sizing recommendations.

Production Environment Setup

The hardened production environment setup for Release described in this guide in the following diagram.

The diagram shows the following components from left to right:

• The user's computer: The user will initiate an SSL (secure) connection to the load balancer that fronts the clustered Release installation.
• The load balancer: The load balancer terminates the SSL connection and routes the request to the Release instance that the user is logged into.
• The Release instances: The instances run in a clustered (active/active) setup, sharing the load.
• The Open ID Connect (OIDC) provider authenticates users who are logging into the Release systems. Release supports both OIDC and LDAP.
• The database: The SQL database that hosts the repository of the Release instances.

Important: It is recommended to have a multi-node setup with odd number of nodes to facilitate high fault tolerance in production environments. It is also recommended not to have a cluster with more than five nodes to prevent database latency issues. You can, however, with some database configuration tuning, have a cluster with more than five nodes. Contact Digital.ai Support for more information about setting up a cluster with more than five nodes.

Preparation

In the first phase of setting up the production environment, you must determine the correct hardware requirements and obtain the necessary prerequisites.

Obtaining Release Servers

Requirements for installing Release defines minimal system requirements. The following is recommended for each production Release machine:

• 3+ Ghz 2 CPU quad-core machine, amounting to 8 cores, or better.
• 16 GB RAM or more
• 500 GB hard disk space

Digital.ai has performance tested Release 7.5.0 with a similar setup. In this setup Digital.ai was able to simulate a load of 100 requests per second with a 99% response time of under 700ms.

note

All the Release cluster nodes must reside in the same network segment. This is required for the clustering protocol to function correctly. For optimal performance, it is also recommended that you put the database server in the same network segment to minimize network latency.

important

If you are using Release in cluster mode, you must specify a shared directory to store generated reports.

See Cluster Mode for details on setting up Release in cluster mode.

Choosing a Database Server

A production setup requires an external clustered database to store active and archived data from Release. The supported databases are described in Configure the Release SQL repository in a database.

Refer to the database server supplier's documentation for hardware recommendations.

Choosing a Load Balancer

To run a high-availability (HA) setup, you must front the installation with a load balancer so that users are unaware of which of the clustered nodes they are being routed to. This guide uses HAProxy as an example. However, any HTTP(s) load balancer that supports the following features can be used:

• SSL offloading
• Checking a custom HTTP endpoint for node availability
• Sticky sessions

For example, some load balancers that support this feature set are:

• Citrix NetScaler
• F5 BIG-IP
• HAProxy

Choosing an Authentication Provider

Release supports a number of single-sign on (SSO) authentication providers, including Secure LDAP (LDAPS) and OIDC providers. Many cloud providers support authentication through OIDC:

• Google Identity Platform
• Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Office 365)
• OKTA Identity provider

If you do not want to use a cloud provider or if your SSO solution is not compatible with OIDC, you can integrate your SSO with Keycloak, which is an OIDC bridge.

Choosing a Monitoring and Alerting Solution

For a production installation, it is recommended that you set up a proactive monitoring system to monitor system and product performance for the different parts of your installation. Release exposes internal and system metrics over JMX. Any monitoring system that can read JMX data can be used to monitor the installation.

Typical monitoring and alerting tools are:

• Nagios
• Dynatrace
• AppDynamics

Using these tools, you can monitor the product and the systems it is running on in real time. This will allow you to set thresholds and alert on them so that appropriate action can be taken before a system goes down.

Choosing a Forensic Data Gathering Toolchain

In addition to proactive monitoring, it is a good practice to make data gathering available for a production instance. Gathering forensic data enables you to analyze it at a later point in time and perform root cause analysis for outages. You can also use forensic data to determine usage patterns and peak load patterns.

For this kind of monitoring, a time series database is typically used. Common tools include:

• InfluxDB
• Prometheus

You can graph and analyze the gathered data using a tool such as Grafana.

It is also recommended that you set up log file monitoring. The industry-standard toolchain for log file monitoring is the ELK stack:

• Elasticsearch
• Logstash
• Kibana

These tools enable log files to be read and indexed while they are being written, so you can monitor for errant behavior during operation and perform analysis after outages.

Execution phase

After all the machines in the production environment are available, you can install and activate Release and subsystems.

Setting up the Database Server

The basic database setup procedure, including schemas and privileges, is explained in Configure the Release SQL repository in a database. For some databases, additional configuration options are required for use with Release or for better performance.

MySQL or MariaDB

note

MariaDB is not an officially supported database for Release, but you can use it as a drop in replacement for MySQL.

The default installation of MySQL is not tuned to run on a dedicated high-end machine. It is recommended that you change the following MySQL settings to improve its performance. These settings can be set in the MySQL options file. To locate this file on your operating system, see MySQL documentation.

Setting	Value
innodb_buffer_pool_size	Set this to 70-75% of the available RAM of the database server, but not higher. This setting controls how much of the database structure can be kept in memory. The larger it is, the better performant the application will be due to caching at the database level.
innodb_log_file_size	Set this to 256M. This setting controls how much redo logs MySQL keeps. This setting should be set large enough so that MySQL can smooth out peak loads by keeping transactions in the redo log.
innodb_thread_concurrency	Set this to 2 * CPU cores of the database server. For example, for a 2 CPU quad-core machine, this setting should be set to 2 CPU * 4 Cores * 2 = 16.
max_allowed_packet	Set this to 64M. This setting controls how large the packet can be that the server transmits to the client. As the Release database for some columns works with BLOBs, this setting is recommended over the default of 1M.
open_files_limit	We recommend setting this value to 10000 for large installations. This setting controls how many file descriptors the MySQL database can keep open. This setting cannot be configured higher than the output of ulimit -n on a Linux/Unix system. Refer to the documentation of your operating system if this limit is lower than the recommended value.
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit a	Advanced: The default setting of this option is 1 which means that every transaction is always flushed to disk on commit, ensuring full ACID compliance. Setting this option to 0 - will only flush the transaction buffer once per second to the transaction log, or 2 - will directly write the transaction to the transaction log, flush the log once per second to disk, can lead to transaction loss of up to a second worth of data. When using a battery-backed disk cache, this setting can be set to 2 to prevent direct flushes to disk. The battery-backed disk cache will then ensure that the cache is flushed to disk before the power fails.

PostgreSQL

There are a number of settings in a default installation of PostgreSQL that can be tuned to better perform on higher end systems. These configuration options can be set in the PostgreSQL configuration file. To locate this file on your operating system, see PostgreSQL documentation.

Note: In Release, you have the PostgreSQL streaming replication set up to to create a high availability (HA) cluster configuration with one or more standby servers ready to take over operations if the primary server fails. For more information, see PostgreSQL Streaming Replication in Release.

Setting	Value
shared_buffers	Set to 30% of the available RAM of the database server. This setting controls how much memory is dedicated to PostgreSQL to use for caching data.
effective_cache_size	Set to 50% of the available RAM of the database server. This setting provides an estimate of how much memory is available for disk caching. The PostgreSQL query planner uses this to figure out whether query plan results would fit in memory or not.
checkpoint_segments	Set to 64. This setting controls how often the Write Ahead Log (WAL) is checkpointed. The WAL is written in 16MB segments. Setting this to 64 means that the WAL is checkpointed once every 64 * 16MB = 1024MB or once per 5 minutes, whichever is reached first.
default_statistics_target	Set to 250. This setting controls the amount of information stored in the statistics tables for optimizing query execution.
work_mem	Set to 0.2% of the available RAM of the database server. This setting controls how much memory is available per connection for doing in memory sorts and joins of query results. In a 100 connection scenario, this will amount to 20% of the available RAM in total.
maintenance_work_mem	Set to 2% of the available RAM. This setting controls the amount of memory available to PostgreSQL for maintenance operations such as VACUUM and ANALYZE.
synchronous_commit	Advanced: The default setting of this option is on, this guarantees full ACID compliance and no data loss on power failure. If you have a battery-backed disk cache, you can switch this setting to off to get an increase in transactions per second.

Setting up the Release Nodes

As Release has the potential of running both remote and local script tasks, it is important to harden the Release environment from abuse. There are many industry-standard practices to ensure that an application runs in a sandboxed environment. You should at least take the following actions.

Operating System and Java

See the System requirements for supported operating systems and Java requirements.

Obtaining the Release Distribution

Download Release from the Deploy/Release Software Distribution site (requires customer login).

For information on supported versions of Release, see Supported Digital.ai product versions.

Installation

To install Release on the machines with minimum rights:

1. Create a dedicated non-root user called xl-release. This ensures that you can lock down the operating system and prevents accidental privilege escalations.
2. Create a directory under /opt called xebialabs, where the xl-release user has read access.
3. Extract the downloaded version of Release in the /opt/xebialabs directory.
4. Change the ownership of the installed product to xl-release and grant the user read access to the installation directory.
5. Grant the xl-release user write access to the /opt/xebialabs/xl-release-<version>-server/conf, /opt/xebialabs/xl-release-<version>-server/log, and /opt/xebialabs/xl-release-<version>-server/plugins directories.
6. Copy your license file to the /opt/xebialabs/xl-release-<version>-server/conf directory. You can download your license file from the Deploy/Release Software Distribution site (requires customer login).

Note: From Digital.ai Release 22.1, if you install the Digital.ai Release license on one of the Release nodes within a cluster, the licenses are automatically updated on all the other nodes of that cluster. For more information, see Renewal of Cluster Licenses.

Configure the SQL Repository

For a clustered production setup, Release requires an external database, as described in How to configure the Release SQL repository in a database.

Configure Release Clustering

To configure Release in a clustered active/active setup, see How to configure cluster mode.

For a production setup, set the clustering mode to full. In full cluster mode, the cluster is running in an active/active manner. All nodes are available in the load balancer and traffic is shared between them.

important

• Make sure that all the nodes in the cluster are set to run in the same mode (xl.cluster.mode must be set to full in the XL_RELEASE_SERVER_HOME/conf/xl-release.conf file). See How to configure cluster mode.
• If you want to use the webhooks feature in a High Availability (cluster mode) setup, the JMS queue cannot be embedded (xl.queue.embedded must be set to false in the XL_RELEASE_SERVER_HOME/conf/xl-release.conf file). It must be external and shared by all nodes in the Release cluster. See How to configure cluster mode.

Configure User Authentication

In addition to configuring the cluster and database, you should also set up a secure way of authenticating users. For production setups, it is recommended that you use OIDC provider, Keycloak, or an LDAP directory system over the LDAPS protocol. For more information, refer to:

• Configure Open ID Connect authentication for Release
• Configure LDAP security for Release

Configure Release JVM Options

By default, Release is configured to provide a good out-of-the-box trial experience. For optimal production use, the runtime configuration of Release should be configured. It is recommended that you add or change the following settings in the conf/xlr-wrapper-linux.conf or the conf/xlr-wrapper-windows.conf file.

Setting	Value
-server	Instructs the JVM to run in the server profile.
-Xms8192m	Instructs the JVM to reserve a minimum of 8 GB of heap space.
-Xmx8192m	Instructs the JVM to reserve a maximum of 8 GB of heap space.
-XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions	Instructs the JVM to unlock experimental options.
-XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=1024m	Instructs the JVM to assign 1 GB of memory to the metaspace region (off-heap memory region for loading classes and native libraries).
-Xss1024k	Instructs the JVM to limit the stack size to 1 MB
-XX:+UseG1GC	Instructs the JVM to use the new G1 (Garbage First) garbage collector. As of Java9, this will be the default garbage collector.
-Dsun.net.inetaddr.ttl=60
-XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError	Instructs the JVM to dump the heap to a file in case of an OutOfMemoryError. This is useful for debugging purposes after the Release process has crashed.
-XX:HeapDumpPath=log/	Instructs the JVM to store generated heap dumps in the log/ directory of the Release server.

Additional Production Configuration Options

In addition to settings above, it is recommended that you configure the following settings for production installations:

Setting	File	Value
xl.metrics.enabled	xl-release.conf	Set to true so that the Release system can be monitored using monitoring tools. Metrics will be exposed over JMX.

Finalize the Node Configuration

After the node(s) are configured for production use, their configuration needs to be finalized. To do so, run the /opt/xebialabs/xl-release-<version>-server/bin/run.sh or /opt/xebialabs/xl-release-<version>-server/bin/run.bat script on a single node to start the Release server.

This is the initial installation and Release will prompt these questions:

Question	Answer	Explanation
Do you want to use the simple setup	no	Some properties need to be changed for production scenarios.
Please enter the admin password	...	Choose a sufficiently difficult admin password.
Do you want to generate a new password encryption key	yes	You should generate a random unique password encryption key for the production environment.
Please enter the password you wish to use for the password encryption key	...	If you want to start Release as a service on system boot, it is recommended that you do not add a password to the password encryption key, as this prevents automated start. If your enterprise security compliance demands it, it is possible to add a password now.
Would you like to enable SSL	no	SSL offloading is done on the load balancer so that session stickiness can be enabled. In this scenario, there is no need to enable SSL on the Release servers.
What HTTP bind address would you like the server to listen to	0.0.0.0	Add this to listen on all interfaces. If you only want to listen on a single IP address/interface, enter that one.
What HTTP port number would you like the server to listen on	5516	This is the default port; it is possible to enter an different port number.
Enter the web context root where Release will run	/	By default, Release runs on the / context root ( in the root of the server).
Enter the public URL to access Release	https://LOADBALANCER_HOSTNAME	For Release to correctly rewrite all the URLs, it must know how it can be reached. Enter the IP address or hostname configured on the load balancer, instead of the IP address and port of the Release server itself. The protocol is https.
Enter the minimum number of threads for the HTTP server	30	Unless otherwise instructed, the default value can be used.
Enter the maximum number of threads for the HTTP server	150	Start with the default value. If monitoring points to thread pool saturation, this number can be increased.
Do you agree with these settings	yes	Type yes after reviewing all settings.

After you answer yes to the final question, the Release server will boot up. During the initialization sequence, it will initialize the database schemas, after which it will display:

You can now point your browser to: https://<LOADBALANCER_HOSTNAME>/

Stop the Release server. Edit the conf/xl-release-server.conf file and change or add the configuration options that were not filled in during the setup procedure.

Option	Value	Explanation
hide.internals	true	Hides exception messages from end users and only presents them with a key, which the Release administrator can use to find the exception.
client.session.timeout.minutes	20	Defines the session idle timeout. Set this to the amount of minutes that is defined by your enterprise security compliance department.

Copy the conf/repository-keystore.jceks and conf/xl-release-server.conf to the other nodes so that they run on the same settings.

All nodes are now fully configured and can be booted up.

Boot Sequence

After all Release nodes are configured, you can start them. To do so:

1. Start the first node.
2. Wait until the node is reachable at http://<node_ip_address>:5516/.
3. When the node is reachable, boot the other node(s).
4. In the case of full cluster mode, check that every node reports success on a GET request to http://<node_ip_address>:5516/ha/health.

Set up the Load Balancer

This example shows how to use HAProxy to set up a load balancer configuration. The sections below shows how to set up the routing and health checks for the load balancer.

frontend xl-http   # <1>
  bind 0.0.0.0:80
  reqadd X-Forwarded-Proto:\ http
  default_backend xl-backend

frontend xl-https   # <3>
  bind 0.0.0.0:443 ssl crt /etc/ssl/certs/certificate.pem   # <4>
  reqadd X-Forwarded-Proto:\ https
  option httplog
  log global
  default_backend xlr-backend   # <5>

backend xl-backend   # <2>
  redirect scheme https if !{ ssl_fc }

backend xlr-backend   # <6>
  option httpchk GET /ha/health   # <7>
  balance roundrobin   # <8>
  cookie JSESSIONID prefix   # <9>
  server xlr-1 xl-release1.acme.com:5516 check cookie xlr-1   # <10>
  server xlr-2 xl-release2.acme.com:5516 check cookie xlr-2

1. The xl-http front end routes all HTTP requests coming in on port 80 to the xl-backend backend.
2. The xl-backend back end will redirect all requests to HTTPS if the front connection was not made using an SSL transport layer.
3. The xl-https front end will handle all incoming SSL requests on port 443.
4. Ensure you have a properly signed certificate to ensure a hardened configuration.
5. Every incoming request on HTTPS will be routed to the xlr-backend back end.
6. The xlr-backend will handle the actual load balancing for the Release nodes.
7. Every Release node is checked on the /ha/health endpoint to verify whether it is up. If this endpoint returns a non-success status code, the node is taken out of the load balancer until it is back up.
8. The load balancer is configured to roundrobin mode; that is, every new user gets assigned a different node than the previous user if there is more than one node available.
9. The Release cookie that is used for the session stickiness (ensuring a user always ends up on the same node in a single session) is the JSESSIONID cookie. The load balancer will add a prefix to that cookie so that it can remember which node the user needs to be routed to.
10. This line defines that the server xl-release1.acme.com lives on port 5516. It needs to be check-ed for aliveness, and the cookie-prefix is xlr-1.

Set up Monitoring

What to Monitor

For a production setup, it is recommended that you at least monitor the following statistics for all systems involved, such as, the load balancer, Release nodes, and database servers:

• Network I/O
• Disk I/O
• RAM usage
• CPU usage

Enabling the xl.metrics.enabled activates the JMX monitoring of the Release nodes. The important JMX beans to monitor are:

Metric	Description
com.xebialabs.xlrelease.metrics.api.internal	Statistics about non-public API endpoints.
com.xebialabs.xlrelease.metrics.api.v1	Statistics about public API endpoints.
com.xebialabs.xlrelease.metrics.repository	Statistics about the persistence application layer.
com.xebialabs.xlrelease.metrics.service	Statistics about the service application layer.
com.xebialabs.xlrelease.metrics.executors.scheduler	Statistics about the background tasks thread pool.
com.xebialabs.xlrelease.metrics.releaseTrigger	Statistics about the triggers thread pool.
com.xebialabs.xlrelease.metrics.riskCalculation	Statistics about the risk calculation thread pool.
com.xebialabs.xlrelease.metrics.pool.repository	Statistics about the database connection pool.
com.xebialabs.xlrelease.metrics.repository	Statistics about the persistence application layer.

Add Monitoring to Release

You can remotely monitor JMX, and add a Java agent Dynatrace agent, or use Nagios or AppDynamics. In case you face any performance issues, you should use a tool such as collectd to push the monitoring statistics to a central collectd server.

note

We recommend that you set up collectd to aggregate the statistics on the Release server and push them to a central collecting server that can graph them.

To set up collectd, you must install the following tools on the Release server:

• collectd
• collectd-java
• FastJMX

After these tools are installed, you can download this sample collectd.conf file, which is preconfigured to monitor relevant Release application and system statistics. To use this file, add two configuration values to the configuration:

• IP_ADDRESS_HERE: Enter the IP address of the central collectd server
• NETWORK_INTERFACE_HERE: Enter the network interface over which Release communicates

Back up Release Installation

To prevent inadvertent loss of data, it is recommended that you regularly back up your production database. Procedures for this are described in Back up Release.