Automatic single-node install

This method sets up a new Arvados cluster using a single host/VM. It is the easiest way to get a new production cluster up and running.

A single-node installation supports all Arvados functionality at small scale. Substantial workloads will require additional nodes and configuration steps.

Prerequisites

You will need:

• a server host running Debian 10 (buster) or Debian 11 (bullseye).
• a unique 5-character ID like x9999 for your cluster (first character should be [a-w] for a long-lived / production cluster; all characters are [a-z0-9]).
• a DNS name like x9999.example.com that resolves to your server host (or a load balancer / proxy that passes HTTP requests on port 80¹ and HTTPS requests on ports 443 and 4440-4460 through to the same port on your server host).
• a firewall setup that allows incoming connections to ports 80¹, 443, and 4440-4460.

¹ Port 80 is only used to obtain TLS certificates automatically from Let’s Encrypt. It is not needed if you have another way to provision certificates.

Options

Arvados needs a PostgreSQL database. To get started quickly, install the postgresql-server package on your server host.

# apt install postgresql

Arvados normally uses cloud VMs or a Slurm/LSF cluster to run containers. To get started quickly, install Docker on your system host. The arvados-server init command, as shown below, will configure Arvados to run containers on the system host.

# apt install docker.io

Arvados needs a login backend. To get started quickly, add a user account on your server host and assign a password. The arvados-server init ... -login pam option, as shown below, will configure Arvados so you can log in with this username and password.

# adduser exampleUserName

Initialize the cluster

# echo > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/arvados.list "deb http://apt.arvados.org/$(lsb_release -sc) $(lsb_release -sc) main"
# apt update
# apt install arvados-server-easy
# arvados-server init -cluster-id x9999 -domain x9999.example.com -tls acme -login pam

When the “init” command is finished, navigate to the link shown in the terminal (e.g., https://x9999.example.com/) and log in with the account you created above.

Activate your new Arvados user account. Copy the UUID (looks like x9999-tpzed-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) from your browser’s location bar and run:

# arv sudo user setup --uuid x9999-tpzed-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Run the diagnostics tool to ensure everything is working.

# arv sudo diagnostics

Customize the cluster

Things you should plan to update before using your cluster in production:

• Set up Google login or another authentication option.
• Set up a wildcard TLS certificate and DNS name, or enable TrustAllContent mode.
• Update storage configuration to use a cloud storage bucket (S3 or Azure) instead of the local filesystem.
• Update CloudVMs configuration to use a cloud provider to bring up VMs on demand instead of running containers on the server host.

Updating configuration

After updating your configuration file (/etc/arvados/config.yml), notify the server:

# systemctl reload arvados-server

Optionally, add “AutoReloadConfig: true” at the top of /etc/arvados/config.yml. Arvados will automatically reload the config file when it changes.

AutoReloadConfig: true
Clusters:
  [...]

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