2.1. Installing xGT¶

Running xGT on-premises can eliminate the need to move sensitive data off-premises (e.g., into a cloud repository) and, depending on the server configuration, can speed up the ingest of large volumes of data. (xGT is also available on Amazon Web Services. See Using xGT on AWS).

2.1.1. Supported Environments¶

The Trovares xGT server runs on an x86-64 platform running enterprise Linux distributions. The reference implementation is RHEL 7.6. For information about running xGT on other Linux distributions contact <gettingstarted@trovares.com>.

OS Specific Information¶
	RHEL 7.6
Distro Format	RPM
Required Packages	bzip2-libs, libcurl, log4cxx, numactl, openssl-libs, zlib
Required to run the xGT client	python, python-pip 1

Note that the required packages will be installed as dependencies when installing the xGT distribution. However, for those sites without direct internet access, pre-installing these packages is required.

2.1.1.1. Python Environment¶

For every platform on which the xGT client will be run, a Python environment must be set up. Trovares recommends using Python 3.5+. Python 2.7.10+ is also supported but Python 2.7 releases are now deprecated.

In addition to the OS packages (e.g., python and python-pip), several Python packages are required:

$ pip install grpcio jupyter pandas protobuf xgt

More information on setting up an xGT client environment is available here: Installing the xGT Client.

2.1.1.2. Assistance¶

To acquire a license for Trovares xGT or for questions about configuring Trovares xGT, contact <gettingstarted@trovares.com>.

2.1.2. Licensing¶

The server component of xGT, called the xgtd process, is distributed as an encrypted executable licensed on a specific server.

The following steps are required to get xGT installed on your server.

Step 1: Extract the disk ID of the intended platform
```
rm -f DiskID
wget docs.trovares.com/onprem/DiskID
chmod 755 DiskID
./DiskID
```
A sample output from such a run:
```
./DiskID
"INTEL_SSDSC2NC260G1_BTWL40730220910JGN"
```
It may also help to capture the following information, but this is optional:
```
$ free -h
$ lscpu
```
Capture the entire output and send that to <gettingstarted@trovares.com>.
Step 2: Download the electronic distribution

Trovares creates a distribution specific for your server. Once the distribution file has been copied to your server, perform these steps:
```
sudo yum erase xgt-server
sudo yum install xgt-server-X.Y.Z-1.x86_64.rpm
```
Of course, the name of your distribution may be different than the one shown here.

Step 3: Running the xgtd server

To start xgtd:

$ systemctl start xgtd

Checking the status of xgtd:

$ systemctl status xgtd

Note that if the installation has been successful, you should see something like this:

$ systemctl status xgtd
● xgtd.service - xgtd
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/xgtd.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2020-11-06 19:05:40 UTC; 2s ago
 Main PID: 9060 (xgtdBinary)
   CGroup: /system.slice/xgtd.service
           ├─9060 /opt/xgtd/bin/xgtd -c /etc/xgtd/xgtd.conf -p 4367
           └─9061 /opt/xgtd/bin/xgtd -c /etc/xgtd/xgtd.conf -p 4367

Nov 06 19:05:40 xgtd-server-host systemd[1]: Started xgtd.

Stopping xgtd:

$ systemctl stop xgtd

Note that it may be necessary to prepend sudo to these commands in your environment.

If the systemctl start xgtd command has been performed followed by a systemctl status xgtd, and the report says that the xgtd process has failed, it may be helpful to look in /var/log/xgtd/ for logging and auditing output.

Footnotes

1: RHEL 7.6 does not provide python-pip by default. It can be installed via the EPEL repository.