Installing the Appliance

Installing the Appliance on a physical server

To install the Appliance on a physical server, enter the BIOS and modify the following settings:

Power on the server and enter the BIOS setup. This is usually done by pressing down [F2] or [DEL] keys before the computer attempts to boot the operating system. Explore the exact method to enter BIOS setup in your user manual.
In the system settings, set the date and time of the system to match the current UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). Time precision is important to ensure the consistency of data in the system. In order to keep time precision, you may configure the Appliance to use NTP servers as described in the network parameters section below.
Insert your copy of the Nexthink V6 Installation DVD into your DVD Drive.
Go to boot sequence (or boot order) settings and select the CD/DVD Drive to be the first device in the list of bootable devices. The system will boot from the Nexthink Installation DVD next time.
Exit BIOS setup saving your changes.

Our latest Appliance server no longer supports legacy BIOS mode. Ensure that your system firmware is set to UEFI mode.

Installing the Appliance on a virtual server

When installing the Appliance on a virtual machine, the exact installation steps will depend on your virtualization platform. Here, we assume that you are familiar with creating and configuring virtual machines on your virtualization platform. If this is not the case, please take your time to learn how to use it. Independently of the virtualization platform that you are using, perform the following operations:

Create a new virtual machine and select Oracle Linux 8 as the guest operating system.
- If Oracle Linux 8 is not an available option in your virtualization platform, select a generic Linux 2.6 (or higher) 64-bit operating system as guest.
Insert the Nexthink V6 Installation DVD into the DVD drive of the host machine or copy the ISO image of the Nexthink V6 Installation DVD to a file system accessible to the host machine.
Indicate your virtualization platform to use the DVD drive or the copied ISO image for booting your newly created virtual machine for the first time.
Start the virtual machine.
Explore the user manual of your virtualization platform to find out how to synchronize the clock of the virtual machine to the clock of the host if the host has precise timing. Alternatively, use NTP servers as described in the network parameters section below.

Our latest Appliance server no longer supports legacy BIOS mode. Ensure that your system firmware is set to UEFI mode.

Using UEFI Secure Boot

The Nexthink Appliance supports Secure Boot, the UEFI firmware security feature. Before powering the system on, make sure to configure the proper boot options to enable it.

After installing the Appliance, you can check that Secure Boot is enabled using the command-line interface:

Make sure the following directory exists: /sys/firmware/efi/
Run the following command to check the status: mokutil --sb-state

Finishing the Installation

When one of the previous steps has been completed, the installation is identical for both physical or virtual servers. If everything went well, your system will now boot from the Nexthink V6 Installation DVD, and you should see the Nexthink V6 splash screen.

Press [ENTER] or wait for the 6 seconds timeout.
After the splash screen, the End-User License Agreement is displayed. Accept to proceed
In the following screen, you are warned that your hard disk will be erased during the installation procedure and that you will lose all data on it. Ensure that you do not have any valuable data on the hard disk and type Yes to proceed.
The installation procedure whether you want to configure the network. If you wish to configure the network, a small dialog box will open where you may change the default IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway. If you choose not to configure your network, the Appliance will take these default values. These can be modified as described in the network parameters section below.
Select the type of keyboard that is attached to your computer. By default, the US keyboard is highlighted.
Choose a secure password for the root user, ensure that it is kept in a safe place, or use another method to make sure that it is not forgotten.
The installation procedure is formatting your hard disk and installing the necessary software packages.
Once the installation has finished, remove the Nexthink V6 Installation DVD from the DVD drive or detach the ISO image from your virtualization platform and reboot the system.

Appliance configuration

Network parameters

If nothing has been specified during the installation, the Appliance server default IP address is 192.168.0.99 with a netmask of 255.255.255.0. To access its web-based configuration page, configure your computer to have the static IP address on the same subnet as the Engine default IP address, which is 192.168.0.0/24. If you modified the network configuration of the server during the installation of the Engine, use your modified configuration values instead of the defaults and then the following steps.
With a cross-over cable, connect the first Ethernet port on the server to the Network Interface Port (NIC) on the client computer. Alternatively, if there is a switch between the client PC and the server, connect both devices to it.
Test the network connectivity between the client computer and the server using the ping command. Execute the ping test using the default IP address of Engine 192.168.0.99. If the ping test fails with the first Ethernet port, repeat the test by connecting to each available Ethernet port on the server. By default, the first Ethernet port is used for testing the network connections, but some servers may behave differently.
Using a web browser and type the following URL in the address field, using the HTTPS protocol: https://192.168.0.99:99. Note that if you just type the IP address 192.168.0.99:99, your web browser will use HTTP by default, and you will get a blank page. Ensure that you specify the HTTPS protocol.
Accept the SSL certificate from Nexthink. Depending on the web browser, you may have a warning about the certificate. Accept it, and you will arrive at the Console welcome screen:
1. Enter the Login Username as admin and Password also as admin to connect to the Web Console for the first time
2. You are prompted to change the admin password of the Web Console. Type in the old password admin and the new password twice. Click Save changes.
3. You are also prompted to change the password of the nexthink account (the account for logging in to the CLI of the Appliance via SSH). Type in the old password 123456 and the new password twice. Click Save changes.
  - This is the range of supported characters for changing the password the first time:

a-z 0-9 ~%.:_-

Note that if you have previously changed the default SSH password of the Appliance through the CLI, you will not be able to change the password again at this point if your precedent password includes any unsupported character.
1. Click the Appliance tab at the top of the window.
2. Select the Network interfaces section from the left-hand side menu.
3. Click EDIT to configure the detected interfaces. Select the type of address, whether Static (recommended) or DHCP, the IP address, the subnet mask, and the default gateway.
4. Click OK. A message confirms the configuration of the network interface.
5. Select the Network parameters section from the left-hand side menu.
6. Enter or modify the External DNS name, Internal DNS name, Hostname, Domain name, DNS servers (IP addresses), Timezone, and NTP time servers.
7. Click Save changes.

When applying the new settings, the connection to the Web Console is lost. To reconnect to the Web Console, type in the configured External DNS name in your browser.

Appliance Proxy configuration

Software installation and updates, as well as the access to the Nexthink Library, use the HTTP and HTTPS protocols. If the Appliance needs to go through a proxy for HTTP/S connections, configure the Proxy settings:

Log in to the Web Console as admin.
Click the Appliance tab at the top of the window.
Select the Cloud services section from the left-hand side menu.
Under Internet proxy, tick the box Enable internet proxy. Fill out the configuration settings for the proxy that appear below.
- HTTP proxy: Name or IP address and port number of the proxy server.
- Authentication method: Choose None, Basic, or Digest. Note that software updates only support the Basic method (or None, if authentication is not required). If an authentication method is chosen:
- Type in the credentials Username and Password.
Optional: Click the TEST button to check that the Proxy chain is working and that the supplied parameters are correct. The Appliance tries to connect to the Nexthink Updates.
Click Save changes to store the Proxy data permanently.

If you are required to manually configure the proxy to access the host where the Nexthink Updates reside, the URLs accessed by the Engine are as follows:

For CentOS-based appliances:
- updates-v6.nexthink.com on TCP port 80 (HTTP) or 443 (HTTPS).
- updates‑centos‑v6.nexthink.com on TCP port 80 (HTTP) or 443 (HTTPS).
For Oracle Linux-based appliances:
- updates-v6-el8.nexthink.com on TCP port 80 (HTTP) or 443 (HTTPS).

If you are required to manually configure the proxy to access the host where the Application Library resides, the URLs accessed by the Engine, the Portal, and the Web Console are:

application-library-v5.nexthink.com on TCP port 443 (HTTPS).
application-library-v6.nexthink.com on TCP port 443 (HTTPS).

To test the connectivity of the Portal appliance to the Application Library:

Log in to the CLI of the appliance that hosts the Portal.
Test the proxy configuration running the following script: /var/nexthink/portal/rsquery/proxyConfig.py --test
- If you get an error beginning with com.nexthink.common.rest.RestException detect if it was a certificate problem with the following command (which ignores certificates): /var/nexthink/portal/rsquery/proxyConfig.py --test --ignore-ssl-problems true
- If you get an answer finished by the word Success!, the test was successful
Optional: To see other options of the script, type in: /var/nexthink/portal/rsquery/proxyConfig.py --help

See the connectivity requirements for a complete list of the ports and domains that need to be available for communication in the different Nexthink components.

Nexthink Engine & Portal installation

Installation can be done either by using our online repository or, if the Appliance is not connected to the Internet, by uploading an offline installation package.

Log in to the Web Console as admin.
Click the Appliance
Select the Installation section from the left-hand side menu. This item is only available if you have installed neither the Engine nor the Portal in the Appliance yet.
Select if you want to use the Nexthink online repository or a file.
In Installation protocol, tick the box Enable HTTPS to connect to the repository using a secure connection. In case of connection problems, try unticking the box. Click Save.
In Repository selection, choose the type of installation:
- Select Use Nexthink online repository to download the software from the web.
  - Optional: Click TEST WEB ACCESS to verify access to the online repository.
- Select Upload Nexthink repository from file to install the software from an offline installation file previously downloaded from Product Downloads. On the desired release page, look for the download of the Nexthink installation package (TGZ file).
  - Click CHOOSE FILE to browse your local file system and select the installation file.
In Software selection, choose whether to install the Engine, the Portal, or both. Note that it is not recommended to install the Engine and the Portal on the same Appliance, except for small setups.
Accept the license agreement.
Click Install.

Please note that you can start the installation process only once. This page is no longer available after the first installation. Go to the Update page for upgrading your Appliance instead.

RELATED REFERENCE

Connectivity requirements

Last updated 4 months ago