Custom Installation

The purpose of this page is to document the ways that Community Edition can be customized.

Community Edition is not for production workloads. Use it for labs, evaluation, and learning only.

There are a number of environment variables that can be defined prior to deploying the Community Edition host that will allow you to customize the default IP address used for the install, the URL for the Community Edition user interface, the use of install telemetry, and more.

Info

All environment variables exported via the command line will not persist beyond the current terminal session, and only apply to the user that exports the variables. If a variable needs to be exported, run the install from the same terminal session. All environment variables will be exported using the following command structure: export <variable_name>=<value>

HTTP & HTTPS proxy support

If you would like to install Community Edition behind a proxy, you can use the HTTPS_PROXY and HTTP_PROXY environment variables. Additionally, the NO_PROXY environment variable can be used to add addresses that should not be proxied to the default list of addresses.

export HTTPS_PROXY=https://proxy:1234
export HTTP_PROXY=http://proxy:5678
export NO_PROXY=<IP address or FQDN>

Change IP address

The install script will choose the IP address of the interface set as the default route using the ip route command. Should you choose to use a different default IP address, you can export the IP_ADDRESS environment variable.

export IP_ADDRESS=192.168.1.150

Deployment FQDN (fully qualified domain name)

The FQDN for the deployment (DU_FQDN) sets the URL for the Community Edition user interface. It may be useful to customize the fully qualified domain name based on an existing DNS domain, for example.

Defaults:

• DU_FQDN="pcd.pf9.io"
• Resulting fully qualified domain name: pcd.pf9.io

export DU_FQDN="pf9.lan"
# This will result in pf9-test.lan as the FQDN for the user interface

Installing with a signed SSL certificate

CE can be installed with a signed SSL certificate instead of the default self-signed certificate. You may do this by setting both USER_CERT_PATH and USER_KEY_PATH environment variables with the fully qualified paths to the certificate and key files.

It is required to generate the certificates with the appropriate wildcard SANs and Key Usage:

• *.pf9.localnet
• *.domain.net

The first, *.pf9.localnet is required for internal usage. The second depends on the shortname/FQDN used. For example if the DU_FQDN is "air99.platform9.net", then ensure the certificate has SANs for *.platform9.net.

In addition, ensure the following Key Usage extensions are enabled:

X509v3 extensions:
  X509v3 Key Usage: critical
  	Digital Signature, Key Encipherment  
  X509v3 Extended Key Usage:
  	TLS Web Server Authentication, TLS Web Client Authentication

Defaults:

• These variables are not set by default, as installing a self-signed certificate is the default behavior.

export USER_CERT_PATH=/path/to/cert
export USER_KEY_PATH=/path/to/key

Community Edition deployment networking

Community Edition is installed as a Kubernetes deployment, and uses internal networking for communication between pods (POD_CIDR ) and for exposing applications as service IPs (SERVICE_CIDR ). If these IP address ranges conflict with your organization's networking ranges, they can be changed as needed. If there is no conflict, there's no need to change these default ranges.

Defaults:

• SERVICE_CIDR="10.21.0.0/16"
• POD_CIDR="10.20.0.0/16"

export SERVICE_CIDR="10.21.0.0/16"
export POD_CIDR="10.20.0.0/16"

Installation telemetry

The Community Edition installation collects anonymous telemetry during the installation process allowing Platform9 to improve the installation process. Should you wish to opt out, the TELEMETRY environment variable can be set to false.

Default:

• TELEMETRY=true

export TELEMETRY=false

Skip install pre-requisites check

The Community Edition installer runs a series of pre-requisite checks before installing, such as validating the amount of CPU & memory available. This behavior can be changed by setting the SKIP_PRECHECKS environment variable to true .

Default:

• SKIP_PRECHECKS=false

Warning

Forcing an install with less than the required amount of CPU & memory will cause it to fail!

export SKIP_PRECHECKS=true

Skip post-install experience poll

As part of our ongoing effort to make the install experience as smooth & painless as possible, we've added a post-install poll to capture how you rated the installation experience. The SKIP_RATING_PROMPT variable can be set to true to disable this behavior.

Default:

• SKIP_RATING_PROMPT=false

export SKIP_RATING_PROMPT=true

Automatically accept EULA

The ACCEPT_EULA environment variable can set to true before installing Community Edition, providing you have read and agreed to the EULA in advance. This environment variable can useful in the case of automating Community Edition installs.

Default:

• ACCEPT_EULA=false

export ACCEPT_EULA=true

Automatically clean-up previous installation

The SHOULD_CLEANUP environment variable can be set to true to bypass the prompt to keep or delete a prior installation. The default is false .

Default:

• SHOULD_CLEANUP=false

export SHOULD_CLEANUP=true

Extending default deployment timeout

If you are experiencing install failures due to timeouts, they may be resolved by setting the install script's default timeout period to longer than 600 seconds using the SVC_DEPLOYMENT_TIMEOUT environment variable. The normal installation process uses an internal variable, which can be changed with this environment variable.

Default:

• The default internal timeout period is 600 seconds.

export SVC_DEPLOYMENT_TIMEOUT=1200

Kubernetes workload support

Kubernetes management plane support is optional in CE, enabled via the interactive install prompt or by pre-exporting ENABLE_K8S as true. The default is false.

export ENABLE_K8S=true

Protected environment variables

The following environment variables are critical to the installation process and must not be changed, as this will cause installation failures: S3_BUCKET and S3_USER_AGENT.