VM Requirements
Catarina Duarte
Hello all,
I hope this message finds you well. I am reaching out to seek your expertise and advice regarding the deployment of the INCEpTion platform in a cloud environment, specifically on Azure or any other you find better.
I am currently in the preliminary stages of testing the platform for my master's thesis and have been utilising the INCEpTion platform in standalone mode with macOS (64-bit). As I progress, my intention is to transition this setup to a cloud server to leverage the benefits of scalability, flexibility, and enhanced performance that cloud infrastructure offers.
Given the multitude of options available, I find myself in need of guidance on selecting the optimal Virtual Machine (VM) configuration for this purpose. Could you kindly provide insights or recommendations on the following aspects?
- Operating System Image: Between options like Ubuntu Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and others, which would be the most suitable or preferred choice for running the INCEpTion platform efficiently?
- VM Size: Considering factors such as the number of processors, the amount of RAM, and storage requirements, what would constitute the minimum or recommended specifications to ensure smooth operation and scalability of the platform?
Thank you very much in advance for your time and assistance. I look forward to your valuable suggestions and discussions on this matter!
Best regards,
Catarina Duarte
Richard Eckart de Castilho
> On 28. Mar 2024, at 00:28, Catarina Duarte <cata.r...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> • Operating System Image: Between options like Ubuntu Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and others, which would be the most suitable or preferred choice for running the INCEpTion platform efficiently?
If you are very familiar with your Linux, you should be able to use any distribution.
That said, our documentation mainly focusses on Debian. So if you want to be able to stick close to the documentation, I would recommend you use Debian. Ubuntu is reasonably close to Debian, but you may still find differences. Note that Debian has changed over time and it
may be that more recent versions diverge a bit from the state of our documentation.
> • VM Size: Considering factors such as the number of processors, the amount of RAM, and storage requirements, what would constitute the minimum or recommended specifications to ensure smooth operation and scalability of the platform?
It depends really on what you are doing and at which scale. For some users, INCEpTION will work fine on a 2 CPU, 4GB RAM 20 GB HDD and others are better off with a 16 CPU, 32 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD machine. Maybe start with something mid-range (4 CPU, 8 GB RAM, 100 GB SSD), monitor your system performance and upgrade as required. It is strongly recommended you use a solid state drive instead (SSD) of a spinning disk (HDD).
If you want to run on Azure, there are a few known issues you should be aware of:
https://inception-project.github.io/releases/31.4/docs/admin-guide.html#_running_on_azure
Also, note that you must not configure multiple INCEpTION instances to access the same data filesystem folder and the same database. INCEpTION keeps in-memory caches for database objects that are not synchronized across instances and keeps file locks in the file system.
So you can presently not scale it simply by firing up new instances and connecting them to
the same filesystem/db - you can currently only scale the VM your are running on (add more CPU, RAM, HDD).
Cheers,
-- Richard