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 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 VMware ESXi, vSphere/vCenter, Azure, AWS

Note: Attached at the end of the article is a sudoers file. It can be referenced to give a new OS user the minimum required permissions to install the rpm file. If you want to copy/paste the contents of the file into a sudoers file in /etc/sudoers.d/ you will have to either update the user in the attached file from vtuser to the username you will create or create a user with the same name.

Dependencies

VT API and Writer .rpm has some dependencies (httpd, openssl, java) that are available in the Red Hat repos. They should be automatically installed as part of the VT API and Writer .rpm

1. PostgreSQL Database

PostgreSQL Database is mandatory and can be installed locally (instructions below) or externally (https://support.visiblethread.com/hc/en-us/articles/360034667252-How-to-configure-VT-Writer-on-Red-Hat-to-connect-to-an-external-database-) .

Although the rpm doesn’t depend on it, PostgreSQL is required. We support PostgreSQL versions 12 - 15 and recommend using a version minimum of 12. Here is an example install of PostgreSQL 12 using the PostgreSQL 12 module:

Install PostgreSQL 12
sudo dnf module enable postgresql:12
sudo dnf install -y postgresql-server postgresql-contrib

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

2. Install Java

Install the latest version of Java:

sudo yum install -y java-17-openjdk

3. Download the VT Writer RPMs

The VT Writer and API .rpm's  are available to download here:

https://visiblethread.s3.amazonaws.com/public/download/visiblethread-api-1.0.4.all.rpm 

https://visiblethread.s3.amazonaws.com/public/download/visiblethread-readability-5.0.3-1.x86_64.rpm 

To verify that the download completed successfully you can check the md5 hash :

ccf1a6943770113236202d0623a4bf2d visiblethread-api-1.0.4.all.rpm
fa882c785d66f855710642ecc8476265 visiblethread-readability-5.0.3-1.x86_64.rpm

4. Install the VisibleThread Writer API

For deployments on Azure using the Azure monitoring Agent, please follow the steps in Change Web Worker Default Port. You will need to change the API port before continuing to the Writer install step (#5 below).

The API uses port 8084, which is taken up by waagent service in Azure RHEL. Stop this service before continuing via:

sudo systemctl stop waagent

To install the API, run the following command:

sudo yum install -y visiblethread-api-1.0.4.all.rpm

5. Install the VisibleThread Writer application

sudo yum install -y visiblethread-readability-5.0.3-1.x86_64.rpm

sudo systemctl start waagent

Details of how to set up and configure the server can be found here

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