Installation Workflow

Installing an OSF portal involves many components and steps. At the simplest end of the spectrum is installing an image on a cloud-computing instance. The most complicated end of the spectrum is a local multi-server installation with all components and backups and rollovers.

The installation workflow is understood to encompass getting all of the core software systems installed and initially tested. Configuration for ultimate public release -- including design, theming and portal structuring -- is explicitly understood to be part of the separate Configuration Workflow.

The installation workflow fits within the overall OSF workflow as follows:



To understand this workflow in more detail, we first provide a general overview and then attend to the specific parts.

Workflow Overview
The installation workflow herein assumes a local installation (and not a cloud instance).

The installation steps are mostly linear, beginning with the installation of the basic LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack:



After installation of the LAMP stack, the Drupal and then supporting index systems (Virtuoso and Solr) for OSF are installed. Then, the specific portions of the OSF stack (OSF Web Service and OSF-Drupal) are installed. The systems are then tested and initially configured.

Cloud Instance
It is possible to install the OSF system as an Amazon EC2 AMI image that can be installed with a single click. If you are interested in this latter option, please contact Structured Dynamics directly.

Standard Instance
The major overall guidance to a new, standard instance is provided by the OSF Web Service Installation Guide. This is the major reference resource, and provides step-by-step instructions on installing the entire stack.

In addition to the components noted above, a couple of additional applications as part of the stack are also described at this stage, including * Smarty templates, GATE and its installation (which is the text processing component), and the related OSF tagger.

As a central component, setting up a Drupal site gets some additional attention, as well as notable Drupal modules. Adding the structAppend or Tracker modules also have some separate instructions.

Depending on the installation, there may also need to be some optional considerations such as proxying Virtuoso or recompiling PHP with IODBC for 64-bit installations.

Lastly, there may be some site-specific applications (like FME for ETL transformations of spatial relational databases) that may require installation.

Multi-server Instance
Larger OSF installations may also warrant multiple server installations. There is guidance on a multi-server OSF Web Service server instance and well as guidance for making trade-off decisions regarding hardware and configurations for larger installations.

Lastly, there is some guidance on how to set up a local Drupal sandbox for testing and refining Drupal portal designs.

zWiki Documentation
Should you desire to also establish your own local technical documentation, there is guidance on creating your own zWiki and how to configure the local settings for MediaWiki.

Checklists
There are a number of checklists available to aid the installation process.

Tools and Tooling Environment
Here are some of the tools that can be helpful during various installation steps:



You should consult the Desktop Development Environment for links and more particulars on these tools.