Installation/Appliance
| Appliance
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Introduction
- The appliance is the recommended way to use Openbravo.
The Openbravo appliance is a:
- Standard Ubuntu Server LTS
- 20.04 LTS since Q2 2023
- 18.04 LTS since Openbravo PR18Q4
- 14.04 LTS for earlier Openbravo releases
- With a preinstallation of needed packages: Apache, Apache Tomcat, PostgreSQL, etc
- Backup and restore scripts
- Openbravo compiled and ready to run
- Additional configurations to make Openbravo deployment optimized and secure.
The concept of the appliance is to have Ubuntu Server as an operating system and as much standard as possible with the minimal set of customization's that are only required for Openbravo.
What's new in Appliance 20.04
 | The Appliance 20.04 is still being finalized and not yet available. |
| | The Appliance 20.04 does NOT contain any Openbravo preinstalled anymore, just is shipped empty. |
The Appliance 20.04 has these key benefits:
- Older Appliance based on Ubuntu 18.04 is nearing its End Of Live at End of May 2023
- Based on Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS (Long Term Support) release
- PostgreSQL 12 (compared to 10)
- Apache Tomcat 9 (compared to Tomcat 8.5)
Note: PostgreSQL 12 has significant improvements related to Openbravo (from runtime performance, to better maintainability. This feature alone is a very good reason to migrate to the new Appliance version.
Usage difference in Appliance 20.04 compared to 18.04
Good news: In many cases for a user there are only very small differences in usage at all.
The following is listing relevant changes:
- No /etc/init.d/tomcat anymore, use systemctl instead to restart services
- The command to start tomcat no longer wait for Openbravo application to be up and running
- That is removing a custom past behavior to be more in line with other system services
- A utility is provided to explicitly wait (as before) in case any automation might require that: /usr/share/openbravo/tomcat-wait-for-context
- The file /var/lib/tomcat/logs/catalina.out is gone. See this section for more information.
- The rotated logfiles /var/lib/tomcat/logs/catalina.<date>.log and /var/lib/tomcat/logs/localhost.<date>.log are only kept for 90 days now
- For SSL/TLS the minimum version is now TLSv1.2 globally.
- The connection between Apache and Tomcat has been changed from using mod_jk to mod_proxy_http
- mod_jk is considered deprecated by upstream tomcat
- It does not allow using WebSockets
- The default postgres configuration was improved to
- Load pg_stat_statements extension by default
- Backport some better defaults from future PostgreSQL versions
- Using Openbravo Module Management (MMC) Rebuild feature is not supported
- This feature to start a rebuild from inside the application was removed from Openbravo with the 21Q1 release
- The appliance does not support it even if using an older Openbravo release still containing it
- This is only about the Rebuild button. Other MMC usage like installing or updates modules is not affected by this.
- Tomcat (and the Openbravo Application inside) is not allowed to write to all server folders anymore by default.
- The attachment folder (attach.path in Openbravo.properties) must exist before starting tomcat
Usage difference in Appliance 20.04 compared to 18.04 (ISO only)
Using the Appliance ISO has a few additional changes to be aware of
- The ISO installer requires internet (configured and working) during the installation
- This is needed to download additional Ubuntu packages during the install process (i.e. OpenJDK)
- The ISO installer will not ask for the system hostname, however it can be changed after the installation process as documented here
- The ISO installer will not ask for the timezone, however it can be changed afterwards as documented here
What's new in Appliance 18.04
The Appliance 18.04 has these key benefits:
- Older Appliance based on Ubuntu 14.04 is nearing its End Of Live in April 2019
- Based on latest Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS (Long Term Support) release
- PostgreSQL 10 (compared to 9.3)
- OpenJDK 11 (compared to OpenJDK 7)
- Currently OpenJDK 10 is shipped until Ubuntu LTS receives version 11.
- Apache Tomcat 8.5 (compared to Tomcat 7)
Note: PostgreSQL 10 significantly improves performance of Openbravo. This feature alone is a very good reason to migrate to the new Appliance version.
Usage difference in Appliance 18.04 compared to 14.04
Good news: In most cases for any user there is no difference in usage at all.
There are a few small changes:
- PostgreSQL config changed to use conf.d subfolder editing main config. More details here.
- 'tad' database user used by application is no longer a database superuser. More details here.
- Newer java does not require to configure -XX:MaxPermSize option anymore
- PostgreSQL log & config 10 in name instead 9.3
- SSH server does not longer accept the deprecated ssh-keys of type DSA (ssh-dss in authorized_keys).
- Default umask used by tomcat has changed. New files created by tomcat will no longer be readable by other users (i.e. apache2). This does not affect any usage of the Appliance out of the box but could affect some specific custom configurations.
What's new in Appliance 14.04
The Appliance 14.04 has these key benefits:
- Based on latest Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS (Long Term Suppoer) release
- PostgreSQL 9.3 (compared to 9.1)
- OpenJDK 7 (compared to OpenJDK 6)
- Apache Tomcat 7 (compared to Tomcat 6)
Note: PostgreSQL 9.3 significantly improves performance of Openbravo. This feature alone is a very good reason to migrate to the new Appliance version.
Usage difference in Appliance 14.04 compared to 12.04
Good news: In most cases for any user there is no difference in usage at all.
There are a few small changes:
- PostgreSQL log & config 9.3 in name instead 9.1
- No longer needed to adjust shmmax kernel parameter
Provided platforms
Amazon EC2 AMI
- Intended for production and testing.
This is one of the easiest, fastest and scalable ways to run Openbravo server.
Openbravo Appliance AMI can be started in a few minutes, so it is not only perfect for production but is also quite useful for testing.
Guide of Amazon EC2 AMI.
ISO
- Intended for production servers.
Can be used in:
- Physical servers.
- Virtualization options like VMWare Server, Virtualbox, etc.
- Any hosting provider that allows to use your own ISO.
- In general all the places in which Ubuntu Server is valid should be also fine for Openbravo Appliance.
The installation is basically the same that an Ubuntu Server ISO.
Guide of ISO.
VMware
| | Pre-Installed VmWare image is not available anymore in the new Appliance 18.04. |