Install Rudder Server

This chapter covers the installation of a Rudder Root Server, from the specification of the underlying server, to the initial setup of the application.

Before all, you need to setup a server according to the server specifications. You should also configure the network. These topics are covered in the Architecture chapter.

Ideally, this machine should have Internet access, but this is not a strict requirement.

As Rudder data can grow really fast depending on your number of managed nodes and number of rules, it is advised to separate partitions to prevent /var getting full and break your system. Special attention should be given to:

/var/lib/pgsql
(OS dependent). Please see the database maintenance chapter for more details about the PostgreSQL database size estimation.
/var/rudder
Contains most of your server information, the configuration-repository, LDAP database, etc… Rudder application-related files should stay under 1GB, but the size of the configuration-repository will depend of the amount of data you store in it, especially in the shared-files folder (files that will get distributed to the agents using the "Download a file for the shared folder" Technique).
/var/log/rudder
Report logs (/var/log/rudder/reports) size will depend on the amount of nodes you manage. It is possible to reduce this drastically by unticking "Log all reports received to /var/log/rudder/reports/all.log" under the Administration - Settings tab in the Rudder web interface. This will prevent Rudder from recording this logs in a text file on disk, and will only store them in the SQL database. This saves on space, and doesn’t remove any functionality, but does however make debugging harder.