Prerequisite
This guide assumes you have a running RHEL server with access to the Red Hat repositories (repos).
Minimum Server Spec
12GB RAM
2 CPU Cores
220GB disk
Repositories
The Red Hat repos are typically made available via two methods:
⦁ an active Red Hat subscription – typically used when RHEL runs on-prem, OR
⦁ Red Hat Update Infrastructure (RHUI) – available with cloud providers (e.g. Azure and AWS) to mirror Red Hat-hosted repos and automatically make them available to official RHEL cloud VMs.
Note: VT Writer requires port 443 and port 22.
VT Writer requires 'sudo su' permission to install correctly.
Note: Deployments have been tested on RHEL versions 7.2 - 7.9
Deployments have been tested on VMware ESX Vsphere, Hyper-V, Azure, AWS
Dependencies
VT API and Writer .rpm has some dependencies (httpd, openssl, java) that are available in the Red Hat repos.
Note: Below are the common commands to enable the RHSCL repo in different environments:
|
Red Hat Subscription (typically on-prem) |
sudo subscription-manager repos --enable rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms |
|
AWS |
sudo yum-config-manager --enable rhel-server-rhui-rhscl-7-rpms |
|
Azure |
sudo yum-config-manager --enable rhui-rhel-server-rhui-rhscl-7-rpms |
To verify that the above command worked:
-
run sudo yum repolist
-
look for an entry like “Red Hat … RHSCL” or “Red Hat Software Collections…”
PostgreSQL Install
PostgreSQL Database is mandatory. Although the rpm doesn’t depend on it, PostgreSQL is required. We support PostgreSQL versions 10 - 13 and recommend using a version minimum of 12. Here is an example install of PostgreSQL 12 using the above RHSCL repo:
Install PostgreSQL 12
sudo yum install -y rh-postgresql12 rh-postgresql12-syspaths
Enter Postgresql bash shell and initialize the DB: sudo su - postgres/usr/bin/postgresql-setup initdb
Exit the Postgresql bash shell: exit
Enable and start Postgresql service: sudo systemctl enable --now postgresql
Verify service is active: systemctl status postgresql
Deploying the VT Writer RPM
The VT Writer and API .rpm's are available to download here:
To verify that the download completed successfully you can check the md5 hash :
c9bdff17db6230c52ad188714a385eed visiblethread-api-0.26-1.x86_64.rpm
5951637ad9327efb91aa992c2119803b visiblethread-readability-3.1.1-1.x86_64.rpm
To install run the following commands:
yum install -y visiblethread-api-0.26-1.x86_64.rpm
yum install -y visiblethread-readability-3.1.1-1.x86_64.rpm
After installing these packages your VT Writer server is now ready for use !
Details of how to setup and configure the server can be found here: https://support.visiblethread.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/4410737617041/VT_Writer_and_Email_Server_Configuration_Help_v_3.1.pdf
Note: In the above document VT Writer is referred to as "VT Readability". This is the official name of the product prior to version 2.6.1