RedBorder Manager Installation

Welcome to the RedBorder installation process. Thanks to this guide, anyone can prepare the platform without specific programming knowledge in Linux.

Installing the RedBorder Manager is the first step to start monitoring and protecting your network information with RedBorder's solution. You should review the content of this chapter before starting the installation of the platform (also known as the RedBorder Manager).

Recommendation...

Have a minimal knowledge of networking, as well as basic networking concepts.

Installation Requirements

Please note...

If you run the platform in a virtual environment, performance may decrease compared to an implementation on a physical machine.

The successful implementation of RedBorder requires at least one machine with the Rocky Linux 9 operating system installed. The hardware requirements will depend on whether we install a single manager or a cluster. For each case, these requirements are:

ManagerCluster

• Disk: 80 GB
• RAM: 16 GB
• CPU: 4 cores
• Network Interface: At least one

• Three machines with following specifications each:
  • Disk: 80 GB
  • RAM: 16 GB
  • CPU: 4 cores
  • Network Interface: At least two

Installation Process

The first action to start monitoring your network with RedBorder is to obtain the latest official RedBorder packages for Rocky Linux 9 available at repo.redborder.com.

In the case of installing a cluster...

The entire installation process specified on this page must be repeated for each manager that will make up the cluster.

Config of required repositories

dnf install epel-release && rpm -ivh https://repo.redborder.com/ng/latest/rhel/9/x86_64/redborder-repo-latest-1.0.0-1.el9.rb.noarch.rpm

Redborder Manager Package Installation Command

dnf install redborder-manager

With the packages downloaded and installed, the next step is to configure RedBorder. To do this, we restart the console session:

Console relogin command

/bin/bash --login

This will update the script paths, allowing us to run the installation wizard:

Installation wizard command

rb_setup_wizard

Setup wizard

This will start the installation wizard for the platform in the console, which will serve as a guide throughout the entire process. The very first screen is also guiding with the next steps.

If you are not sure about the current setup you can cancel with the "No" option, which will show the following screen before returning back to the console view.

Cancelling...

In some steps, "No" option will cancel the full installation process, which means that all configuration during the setup process will be lost.

If you are configuring a cluster...

Make sure to complete this guide before running setup wizard on other nodes.

Selection of Options

Navigating through our installation assistant is very simple:

• Move between the available options: press the arrow keys.
• Check a box: press the space key.
• Select an option: press the enter key.

Network Configuration

This step is optional. If you are sure the network interfaces are already configured, you can skip this step. Otherwise, get into the configuration pressing "Yes".

In the lower box, the existing network interfaces on the machine in question are listed. Underneath all the interfaces that the machine possesses, there is the Finalize option, which we can select after successfully configuring the interfaces.

Network Configuration

By selecting an interface and entering it, we are given the option to configure it with a static IP address or to function dynamically (with DHCP).

Network Interface Configuration

If selecting the static IP option, you must specify the IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway:

Static Interface Configuration

Selecting management interface

In case of having multiple interfaces, you need to select which one is the main interface to operate with this manager. The purpose if this interface is to configure the manager as you are doing here and link it with different kind of sensors.

DNS Configuration

The installation wizard will give you the option to choose whether or not to configure DNS servers.

If you need to configure DNS, configure at least one server. This can be done on the following screen:

DNS Configuration

Hostname and Domain

During installation, you have the option to decide the hostname for the RedBorder node, as well as the domain used for communication with potential RedBorder Proxy servers or RedBorder IPS.

The hostname to choose must comply with the RFC1123 standard.

Please note...

The installation wizard automatically generates a random hostname for the machine, as well as indicates a default domain name, which is recommended not to change unless necessary.

Hostname and Domain Configuration

Clustering Service Configuration (Serf)

RedBorder has the ability to work in a distributed manner, distributing functions or workload among two or more nodes, through a synchronization network that allows nodes to communicate and operate. For this, we use Serf(1), this service is responsible for creating the manager cluster and defining the roles of the nodes.

Serf is a decentralized solution for service discovery and orchestration that is lightweight, highly available, and fault-tolerant.

For Serf to work correctly, three parameters are required:

Sync network

Sync network is the network for all managers to sync among them. In case you are really installing a cluster just make sure to select other interface different from management

Indicate the Serf mode (Unicast / Multicast)

Secret key to encrypt Serf network traffic

Put a password from 6 to 20 characters for Serf.

If you are configuring a cluster...

This password should be the same among all managers that will join to the same cluster. In case of a second cluster being in the same network, use a diffent password to prevent managers join to the wrong cluster.

Storage with Amazon S3 (WIP)

When performing a remote installation of RedBorder on AWS, it is also possible to use Amazon's remote storage service with S3.

External Database (WIP)

It is also possible to configure RedBorder to use the Amazon RDS service or some other PostgreSQL database.

Selecting Manager Mode

Depending on the RedBorder installation you want to perform, you can indicate to the platform what should be executed on the node being installed. The most common case will be the installation the full mode, but in case you want to save performance, pick one of other modes instead. In case of a cluster installation, one node should've fullor coremode. Sumerizing for each case:

Single nodeLeader nodeFollower node

Choose the full mode.

Choose the fullmode as selected by default or core mode for minimal installation.

Choose the full mode as selected by default or any other mode for minimal installation.

Manager Mode Selection

Finising the installation

The installation is almost ready, you have to wait until the setup process finish:

Press "OK" to go back to the console.

Additionally you can read the logs about the installation running this:

Print the setup logs

journalctl -u rb-bootstrap -f

If you are configuring a cluster...

Wait until bootstrap has finished the first node (the master node) installation before running rb_setup_wizard in the next nodes (the worker nodes)

At the end of the installation process you will see something like this: