SCInterface VMWare Appliance

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The following is a guide for downloading, installing and evaluating the SCInterface Virtual Appliance. Please follow the steps below to setup your own SCInterface Virtual Appliance today!


Contents

Background on the SCInterface VMWare Appliance

With the release of virtualization support in the v2.2 release of SCInterface, the SCInterface virtual appliance includes all of the options and dependencies necessary to deploy SCInterface within a virtual environment in a matter of minutes. Listed within VMWare's community website at http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/1118, the SCInterface virtual appliance is a commercial grade control panel for managing multiple types of applications and devices through a single web interface.

How would someone use the VMWare SCInterface Appliance? There are a couple of good reasons. The SCInterface VMWare appliance allows you to quickly deploy SCInterface within an virtual environment so that you can:

  1. Deploy failover instances of SCInterface - if one SCInterface VMWare Appliance goes down, you can have another SCInterface VMWare Appliance come online from anywhere with very minimal effort.
  2. Quickly deploy SCInterface to evaluate the entire platform without having to manually install the Linux operating system, web server (i.e. Apache), PostgreSQL database, the SCInterface UI, SCM and SC. We've taken care of all of that for you.
  3. You may only have Windows running on your system and do not have access to a Linux server. With the VMWare Player (http://www.vmware.com/player), you can install the SCInterface VMWare Appliance to your windows system and play all of SCInterface in the virtual environment within Windows.

SCInterface VMWare Configuration

  • CentOS 5
    • 2.6-18 Linux kernel
    • Both 64-bit and 32-bit SCInterface VMWare Appliances are available
  • SCInterface v2.2
  • Apache 2 with PHP 5
  • PostgreSQL 8
  • IPTables pre-configured

Current Version Information

The following table details the current version of the SCInterface VMWare Appliance:

Software Version
SCInterface VMWare Appliance 2.2.20080519
UI 2.2.20080318
Linux SCM 2.2.20080220
SConnectors 20080513
Linux SC 2.2.20080117

Additional Notes:

Overview of Installation

The following provides a quick overview of how to install the SCInterface VMWare Appliance:

  1. Download and register for the SCInterface VMWare appliance.
  2. Install the SCInterface VMWare Appliance.
  3. Configuring the SCInterface VMWare Appliance.
    1. This is where SCInterface will communicate with the master license servers and issue you a license. If your license fails for some reason, please contact us.
  4. Tweak your virtual appliance.

Downloading the SCInterface VMWare Appliance

  1. Download SCInterface either the 32-bit or 64-bit SCINterface VMWare Appliance from one of the following locations:
    • Existing Customers: All existing customers can login to the SCInterface support portal at http://support.scinterface.com and click the plus (+) next to downloads and then choose the SCInterface VMWare Appliance.
      -OR-
    • New Customers: Visit http://www.scinterface.com/download choose your platform of choice (Game Servers, Sensors or Servers) and fill in the brief contact form. Make sure to click Click for Free Technical Support >> if you want to register for free technical support. You will be provided with a list of available downloads including a link to the SCInterface VMWare Appliance.
  2. Save the SCInterface VMWare Appliance tarball (.tar.gz file) to your VMWare Server or VMWare workstation.

Installing the SCInterface VMWare Appliance

  1. Make sure that you have either VMWare Player (free), VMWare Server (free) or VMWare Workstation from http://www.vmware.com.
  2. Save the tarball to your VMWare Server or your VMWare Workstation.
  3. Extract the contents of the tarball by running:
    tar -xzvf SCInterface_VMWare_Appliance.tar.gz
    where SCInterface_VMWare_Appliance.tar.gz is the file you downloaded from the SCInterface website.
  4. Find the file SCInterface.vmx and double click on it to open the Virtual Appliance (in VMware Player or VMware Server - whichever is associated with the .vmx file type). If installed, this should launch VMWare.

Configuring the SCInterface VMWare Appliance

  1. If it has not already started, start the SCInterface virtual appliance. If started correctly, CentOS 5 should start to load.
  2. By default, the SCInterface virtual appliance will try to boot with DHCP. It will fail and continue on if it is unable to locate a DHCP server.
  3. Once booted, login to the console as:
    root
    scinterface1
  4. Next, make sure that you can ping the SCInterface download server to retrieve your license:
    ping download.scinterface.com
  5. If you can ping download.scinterface.com, move on the Step 6. Otherwise, follow these instructions for configuring your networking:
    1. At the console prompt labeled scinterface-scm, configuring the IP address, Gateway and DNS servers for your SCInterface appliance by using the utility:
      system-config-network
    2. Follow the instructions on the screen to configure your network settings.
    3. Make sure you have correct DNS server defined in /etc/resolv.conf file. This will need to be configured to work with your network. Here is a sample /etc/resolv.conf that uses two public DNS servers that you may use:
      nameserver 216.231.41.2
      nameserver 204.117.214.10
    4. After configuring the network, restart your network services by typing the following from the console:
      service network restart
    5. Next, make sure that you can ping the SCInterface download server to retrieve your license:
      ping download.scinterface.com
  6. If the IP address resolves and you can ping the server, press CTRL-C top stop the ping.
  7. Verify that your system date and time are accurate by running the date command. If the time is off more than 30 minutes, the SCM will not be able to start.
  8. Next, we will need to restart the SCM and SC in order for the SCInterface SCM to run correctly. To restart all of the services, run the only one of the following commands. If you see any error messages, this is usually due to the time being incorrectly set.
    /etc/rc.local
    -OR-
    service SC stop; service SCM stop; service SCM start; service SC start
  9. After restarting the SCM service, the SCInterface SCM will communicate with the master SCInterface license servers and issue you an evaluation license. If your license fails for some reason, please contact us.
    1. Read more about SCInterface SCM License.
  10. Move onto the Next Steps section.

Next Steps for the SCInterface VMWare Appliance

  1. Choosing a Platform - Depending on your platform, you may wish to tune SCInterface for your environment. Please follow the following article for more information specific to your platform:
  2. Accessing the Web Interface - Review the instructions within the SCInterface Quick Start Guide for Linux within the section called connecting into the web interface.
    • Installing Applications - Use caution when installing game servers because the SCInterface VMWare virtual appliance is configured to only allow 8GB of storage. Some applications can use in excess of 2GB to 6GB of storage. You may want to install another SC on another system if you want to try out more than just one or two applications.
  3. Licensing - When starting the SCM for the first time (when invoking from the command-line service SCM start) a 30-day evaluation license is automatically issued for your virtual appliance. You will be notified within 48-hours of the expiration through the web interface when to renew. If you wish to read more on licensing information, please visit http://www.scinterface.com/licenses/.

Additional Resources


VMware, the VMware logo and design, Virtual SMP and VMotion are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. http://www.vmware.com

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