Setting Up the Delphix Engine
System Installation, Configuration, and Management / Installation and Initial System Configuration / Setting Up the Delphix Engine

This topic describes how to set up the initial system configuration for the Delphix Engine, including system time, storage, web proxy, SMTP server, email to Delphix Support, and LDAP authentication.

Prerequisites

Once you setup the network access for Delphix Engine, enter Delphix Engine URL in your browser for server setup. 

The welcome screen below will appear for you to begin your Delphix Engine setup.

Delphix Engine Setup Screen

Procedure

The setup procedure uses a wizard process to take you through eight configuration screens:
  • Administrators
  • System Time
  • Network
  • Storage
  • Serviceability
  • Authentication
  • Registration
  • Summary
  1. Connect to the Delphix Engine at http://<Delphix Engine>/login/index.html#serverSetup.
    The Delphix Setup application will launch when you connect to the server.
    Enter your sysadmin login credentials, which initially defaults to the username sysadmin, with the initial default password of sysadmin.  On first login, you will be prompted to change the initial default password.
  2. Click Next.

Administrators

Delphix is installed with the following administrator accounts:

  • System Administrator - "sysadmin" with a password that users can define. This will be the system administrator for the instance.
  • Engine Administrator - "admin" with a password that users can define. This is typically a DBA who will administer all the data managed by the instance.

System Time

  1. Select an option for maintaining the system time.

    OptionNotes
    Set NTP Server

    After selecting this option, select an NTP server from the list, or click Add NTP Server to manually enter a server.


    Be aware that you can highlight more than one NTP Server entry in order to select more than one.

    When configuring a Delphix Engine on VMware, be sure to configure the NTP client on the host to use the same servers that you enter here. On a vSphere client, the NTP client is set in the Security Profile section of the configuration process.

    Manually Select Time and DateClick Use Browser Time and Date to set the system time, or select the date and time by using the calendar and clock displays. Then select the Time Zone.

    If you select Use Browser Time and Date, the date and time will persist as your local time, even if you change the time zone.

    Snapshots from dSources and VDBs reflect the time zone of the source or target environment, not that of the Delphix Engine.
  2. Be sure to choose the appropriate time zone for the Delphix Server, using the drop-down list in the lower left-hand corner of this page.
  3. Click Next.

Network Configuration

The initial out-of-the-box network configuration in the OVA file is set to use a VMXNET3 network adapter.

  1. Under Network Interfaces, click Settings.
  2. The first Network Interface is Enabled by default.

  3. Select DHCP or Static network addressing.
    For Static addressing, enter an IP Address and Subnet Mask.

  4. Select whether to use Jumbo Frames.
    VMXNET3 supports Ethernet jumbo frames, which can be used to maximize throughput and minimize CPU utilization.
  5. Click Save.
  6. Repeat for any other interfaces you have added to the virtual machine (VM) that you wish to configure. They will not be enabled by default.
  7. Under Routing, enter a Default Gateway.
  8. Under DNS Services, enter a DNS Domain Name and DNS Server.
  9. Click Next.

Storage

The Delphix Engine automatically discovers and displays storage devices. 

You can associate additional storage devices with the Delphix Engine after initial configuration, as described in Adding and Expanding Storage Devices.

Storage Disk Usage Assignment Options

The following options are available for storage disk usage assignment:

Data
Once you set the storage unit assignment for a disk to Data and save the configuration, you cannot change it again.

Unassigned / Unused
These disks can be configured later to add capacity for existing data disks.

The Minimum Number of Storage Disks

Configure at least 4 disks for the storage of user data. This makes the Delphix Engine storage manager function more efficiently since duplicated metadata can be distributed across multiple disks.

Serviceability

  1. If a Web Proxy Server is necessary for your environment, select Use a Web Proxy and enter the required information.
  2. If you want the Delphix Engine to send information to the Delphix Support site periodically over https (SSL), select Phone Home Service enabled. This feature requires a connection to the internet and will use the Web Proxy Server configuration.

    With the release of the User-click Analytics feature (a lightweight method to capture how users interact with Delphix product user interfaces), Delphix will collect browser-based, user-click analytics data. Essentially, Delphix selectively tracks actions that a user takes in the product UI. Delphix does not collect, transmit or store any personally identifiable information (PII) which for Enterprise customers includes information such as email address, IP address, username, etc. This feature setting matches an Engine’s Phone Home Service setting:

    If the Phone Home Service is enabled on an Engine, then this feature will be enabled by default.  

    If the Phone Home Service is disabled on an Engine, then this feature will be disabled by default.

    If you want to opt-out please see these CLI instructions - Disabling User-click Analytics. The opt-out is not currently available in the GUI. Please note that we would like to encourage our customers to share this non-PII data with us. Please be aware that the Phone Home Service only sends occasional support log bundles outbound from the Delphix Engine to Delphix Support website.  There is no way to enable inbound access to the Delphix Engine.

  3. Select Use an SMTP Server and enter the required information to enable email notifications for events and alerts.
 


When a critical fault occurs with the Delphix Engine, it will automatically send an email alert to the admin user. Make sure that you configure the SMTP server so that alert emails can be sent to this user. See System Faults for more information.

Authentication Service

To avoid configuration issues, consult with your lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) administrator before attempting to set up LDAP authentication of users for the Delphix Engine.

  1. Select Use LDAP to enable LDAP authentication of users.
  2. Enter the LDAP Server IP address or hostname, and Port number.
  3. Select the Authentication method.
  4. Select whether you want to Protect LDAP traffic with SSL/TLS.
    If you select this option, you must import the server certificate.

  5. When you are done with the LDAP configuration, click Test Connection.

  6. Click Next.

LDAP Authentication When Adding Users

If LDAP has been set up as the authentication service for the Delphix Engine, you must add new users with LDAP as their authentication mechanism. For more information, see Adding Delphix Users and Privileges. Note that you can only add individual LDAP users, not groups.

Registration

If the Delphix Engine has access to the external Internet (either directly or through a web proxy), then you can auto-register the Delphix Engine:
  1. Enter your Support Username and Support Password.
  2. Click Register.

If external connectivity is not immediately available, you must perform manual registration.

  1. Copy the Delphix Engine registration code in one of two ways:
    1. Manually highlight the registration code and copy it to clipboard. Or,
    2. Click Copy Registration Code to Clipboard.
  2. Transfer the Delphix Engine's registration code to a workstation with access to the external network Internet. For example, you could e-mail the registration code to an externally accessible e-mail account.
  3. On a machine with access to the external Internet, please use your browser to navigate to the Delphix Registration Portal at http://register.delphix.com.
  4. Login with your Delphix support credentials (username and password).
  5. Paste the Registration Code.
  6. Click Register.

While your Delphix Engine will work without registration, we strongly recommend that you register each Delphix Engine as part of setup. Failing to register the Delphix Engine will impact its supportability and security in future versions.

To regenerate the registration code for a Delphix Engine please refer to,  Regenerating the Delphix Engine Registration Code. Delphix strongly recommends that you regenerate this code and re-register the engine regularly to maximize the Support Security of the Delphix Engine. Delphix recommends doing this every six months.

Summary

The final summary tab will enable you to review your configurations for System Time, Network, Storage, Serviceability, and Authentication. 

  1. Click the Back button to go back and to change the configuration for any of these server settings.
  2. If you are ready to proceed, then click Submit.
  3. Click Yes to confirm that you want to save the configuration.
  4. Click Setup to acknowledge the successful configuration.
  5. There will be a wait of several minutes as the Delphix Engine completes configuration.

Post-Requisites

  • After configuration is complete, the Delphix Engine will restart and launch the browser-based Delphix Management application. The URL for this will be http://<Delphix Engine>/login/index.html#delphixAdmin.
  • After the Delphix Management application launches, the delphix_admin can login using the initial default username delphix_admin and the initial default password delphix.  On first login, you will be prompted to change the initial password.
  • You can access the DelphixSetup interface at any time by navigating to http://<Delphix Engine>/login/index.html#serverSetup and entering the sysadmin credentials.