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Installing and Configuring Prerequisite Software

Installing prerequisite software

The following software is required to successfully install and use Shinydrive.

Name

Version

Link

JDK or Java® Runtime

11

Download Java SE or OpenJDK

Apache Tomcat®

8.5+

Download Tomcat

Known Issues

  1. Java version 9.0.1 is not compatible with OpenText CWS.

  2. Tomcat version 8.5.16 is not compatible with Shinydrive.

Configuring Tomcat

Once installed, configure Tomcat to meet the Shinydrive needs of your organization. This includes SSL, load balancing, support for large files, UTF-8 support, and scaling.

Determining appropriate sizing

The recommended resource provisioning for Shinydrive is as follows:

  • CPU: 1 core for every 1700 users

  • RAM: 4GB for every 1700 users

For example, if you dedicate 8GB to your Tomcat instance and have 2 cores on your machine, it will be provisioned at a recommended level of up to 3400 users. To add users, scale resources linearly.

Configuring SSL

SSL configuration for Shinydrive Server is handled through Tomcat. For a how-to reference, please review their documentation available at https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-8.5-doc/ssl-howto.html.

Setting up load balancing (Optional)

Shinydrive fully supports environments with Load Balancing using HTTPS protocol. The following diagram is an example of a typical configuration:

 

Shinydrive also fully supports alternate configurations, such as:

If your organization will have more than one Shinydrive Server, each instance must have the same configuration to ensure a consistent user experience. Also, Shinydrive configuration information is stored in the \usr\local\shinydrive folder for that machine. So, if you have more than one Shinydrive Server, each needs to have an exact copy of these folder contents.

  1. Set up one server with the desired configuration (ensure connectors, drives, profiles, etc. are set).

  2. Once complete, deploy a second Shinydrive server on a second machine without configuring.

  3. Deploy the .war into a folder and confirm that http://localhost:8080/shinydrive-admin is reachable on the second machine.

  4. Stop Tomcat on the second Shinydrive server.

  5. On the second Shinydrive server, delete or rename the shinydrive folder in C:\usr\local\

    1. NOTE: Installation of the usr folder is dependent on the drive Tomcat is installed on

  6. Copy the shinydrive folder in C:\usr\local (or drive where Tomcat is installed) from the configured Shinydrive server and paste it into C:\usr\local on the second, Shinydrive server.

  7. Start Tomcat on the second Shinydrive server.

If modifying a server in the future, repeat this process after the change is implemented to ensure alignment across the servers.

Increasing Java memory to support large files (Optional)

Large file support in Shinydrive requires an increase in memory allocation. When increasing memory allocation, it is important to not exceed the available RAM on the server.

To increase memory:

  1. From the system tray on the server, open Tomcat Service Manager.

  2. From the General tab, stop Tomcat.

  3. From the Java tab, in the Maximum memory pool field, increase the amount to the level required to support your organization.

    1. As a guideline, increasing to 8129MB successfully handles files up to 1.2GB in size

  4. Restart Tomcat.

Enabling UTF-8 Support (Optional)

Because Tomcat assumes an iso-8859-1 western European character set on Windows, Shinydrive’s use of UTF-8 can result in incompatibility when users add Unicode characters to files, folders, and volume names.

To enable UTF-8 Support:

  1. In {tomcat-home}\conf\server.xml, update the connector to include the UIREncoding=”UTF8” setting.

    1. For example: <Connector port=”8080” protocol=”HTTP/1.1” connectionTimeout=”20000” redirectPort=”8443” URIEncoding=”UTF-8”/>

  2. Run {tomcat-home}\bin\tomcatw.exe and add a Java Option argument -Dfile.Encoding=UTF8. This will ensure that the Tomcat Properties file includes UTF-8 in the Java Options.

To label a drive (change it’s Volume Name) and include a non-ISO-8859-1 character:

  1. Visit a native to ASCII converter (for example, https://native2ascii.net/)

  2. Enter the text to convert.

  3. Rename the drive using the converted text.

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