Add a new environment to an installation

Overview

This page provides step-by-step instructions on how to add a new environment to an existing Fredhopper deployment by creating the indexer instance of that environment.

Prerequisites

Before adding a new indexer instance to an existing setup, please ensure that you have covered all prerequisites:

• The Fredhopper Deployment Agent is running on the target system
  If this is not the case, please download and install the Deployment Agent according to steps 1 and 2 in the article Install Fredhopper with Deployment Package.
• The correct version of Fredhopper is available within the Deployment Agent
  Install the correct version of Fredhopper on the target server, see Select a different initial FAS version.

  Consistency across instances Ensure that this is the same version of Fredhopper that is used throughout your environment. Indexer/query instances cannot communicate across versions.

• There is no instance currently active on the preset you want to use
  Ensure that there is no previous instance created with the same host and preset.
• You have access to the underlying file system
  You will need to be able to add folders in the base directory of the Fredhopper deployment you want to install the indexer in.
• No indexer by that name exists
  Ensure that no indexer by that name exists at the moment as this will lead to resource conflicts.

The following variables will be used

• <INSTALLATION>: Name of the installation you want to use
• <INSTANCE>: Name of the new instance you wish to create
• <PRESET>: The preset name to configure the defaults of the Fredhopper instance. See Working with the topology file for more information about presets
• <QSERVER_MEMORY>: Memory in megabytes that you want to assign to the indexer
• <HOST>: The name of the host system your Fredhopper Deployment Package is running on
• <BASE_DIRECTORY> : Fredhopper Deployment Package Base Directory (e.g. C:\fredhopper, /home/fredhopper/)

Assumed location for the execution of scripts For all the scripts below, it is assumed that you are located in the <BASE_DIRECTORY> of the server.

Step-By-Step Instructions

No interruption of operation All of the steps below can be executed in a running system and will not impact other processes.

Step 1: Create a new instance on the target system

1. Log in on the server you want the instance to reside on
2. Create the installation:

   bin/deployment-agent-client create -I <PRESET> <INSTANCE> <INSTALLATION>

Step 2: Configure the new instance

1. Set the memory for the Qserver process:

   bin/deployment-agent-client set-option <INSTANCE> qserver_memory=<QSERVER_MEMORY>

2. Set the role of the server to be "staging":

   bin/deployment-agent-client add-role <INSTANCE> http://localhost:8177/static/staging.xml

Step 3: Add indexer directories

1. Create a new directory in the <BASE_DIRECTORY> named <INSTANCE>.
2. Create the following directories in the <BASE_DIRECTORY>/<INSTANCE> folder:
   • backup
   • data
   • logs
   • transformations
3. In the newly created data directory, add the following folders:
   • backup
   • baseline
   • fas-xml
   • fas-xml-incremental
   • incremental
   • tmp
   • work
4. In the transformations directory, create the folder load-data and copy the ETL template from the deployment instance.

   cp -r ./data/instances/deployment/template/instance/transformations/* ./<INSTANCE>/transformations/load-data/

 Click here to see the full structure, as seen for the <INSTANCE> folder from the <BASE_DIRECTORY>

Step 4: Add the instance to the config/topology.txt file.

1. Add an entry to the topology.txt file:

   <INSTANCE> | <HOST> | <PRESET> | - | Comment can go here