Introduction

Apart from installing Exivity in any on premise environment, Exivity can also be deployed from the Azure Market Place (AMP). Deploying Exivity on AMP is straight forward, and can be finised within a few minutes via your Azure Portal.

Azure Marketplace Offering

Login to your Azure Portal at https://portal.azure.com and then go to the Marketplace to search for the Exivity offer:

Once you've selected the Exivity offering, you should be presented with the following screen:

After clicking the Create button, you will be redirected to the VM deployment wizard

Deployment Wizard

1. Fill in a Windows user/pass and pick your deployment Resource Group:

2. Try to pick a recommended VM size type that has enough CPU's and Memory (see this page for general system requirements). Smaller machines are possible, but will influence performance:

3. You may select any additional options, but none are required for running Exivity succesfully, so you may skip this page simply by clicking the OK button:

4. Review the summary and click Create to deploy your Exivity VM:

This may take a few minutes. You may review the status of the Virtual Machine in your VM list:

Write down the Public IP address once it is available. Optionally you may configure a custom DNS name to have an easy way to connect.

Connecting to your Exivity instance

You can logon to your Exivity instance with RDP, but after deployment you should be able to connect to your instance using the public IP address or DNS name of your Exivity instance considering the following default URL:

• https://<Your_Public_IP>:8001

The default admin username is admin with password exivity.

By default no data is loaded into the system, so you'll have to create a new Extractor for obtaining consumption data and a Transformer to process that data. A Report Definition is then created to be able to report on your consumption metrics and costs.

Next steps

A couple of getting started guides are provided here, but feel free to drop us an e-mail or create a ticket in our support portal. We will then assist you to get your started for your specific use case.

Server

Exivity can be installed on any Microsoft Windows 2012 R2 or higher server in your on premise data center or in the cloud. Depending on the amount of data, Exivity recommends the following system configuration:

Both the Data sources and CUPR in above tables are recommended limits. All systems should have a standard C: OS drive. The storage recommendation in the table above is for a D: drive, which preferably is SSD.

Client

The Exivity front-end runs fine in these desktop browsers (with at least the specified version):

• Google Chrome 63

• Microsoft Edge 16

• Opera 50

We don't support Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox at the moment due to missing features in these browsers.

Exivity can be installed in your on premise data center using the provided installer. You can automatically deploy it using the silent installation command line options. But you may also execute it as a interactive installer.

Before you can install Exivity, you'll need the following:

1. A system that complies with the Exivity minimal system requirements

2. The Exivity software installation executable

3. A valid Exivity license key

If you need help on fulfilling one or more of the above requirements, please get in contact with our support department.

Interactive installation

To install Exivity interactively, execute the provided setup executable. Then follow the instructions on screen:

• Provide a valid license key

• Pick a folder to install the Exivity program Files

• Pick a folder that Exivity will use to save its configuration, extraction and reporting files. This is called the Exivity home directory

• Provide the TCP port for the Exivity API (default: 8002)

• Provide the TCP port for the Exivity GUI (default: 8001)

• Choose a admin username and password

• After the installer completes, you can automatically start it.

Silent Installation

To execute a silent installation, consider the following command line parameters:

<setup>.exe /S /EXIVITY_PROGRAM_PATH=[path] /EXIVITY_HOME_PATH=[path] /ADMIN_USER=[user] /ADMIN_PASSWORD=[password]

EXAMPLE:

<setup>.exe /S /EXIVITY_PROGRAM_PATH="C:\Program Files\Exivity\program" /EXIVITY_HOME_PATH=D:\Exivity\home /ADMIN_USER=master /ADMIN_PASSWORD=P@ssword

Upgrading

Upgrading your installation of Exivity is very simple and fast:

Manually upgrade

Execute the setup executable. It will detect the installed version of Exivity, and will automatically upgrade when you click Next

Silent upgrade

When executing <setup>.exe /S, your existing installation will be automatically upgraded.

Installing a valid SSL certificate

Exivity comes standard with an insecure self signed SSL certificate. It is therefore highly recommended to replace the default certificate with an official one, signed by your Certificate Authority. To install a signed certificate, follow this procedure:

1. Download the 32 bit version of openssl.exe from https://slproweb.com/products/Win32OpenSSL.html, and install this tool on the Exivity server

2. Use the openssl.exe executable to generate a valid key file on the Exivity server by executing the following command:

   • C:\TEMP>c:\location\to\openssl.exe genrsa -out exivity.key 4096

3. Then run the following command to create a certificate signing request file:

   • C:\TEMP>c:\location\to\openssl.exe req -new -key exivity.key -out exivity.csr

4. You will be asked to enter general information like company name, city, etc. However, it is important to include the FQDN of the Exivity server when asked for:

   • 'Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []'

   NOTE: when asked, it is required to not provide a password (leave this field empty and press return), otherwise the Exivity application will not be able to use your certificate.

5. The generated CSR file should be send to your Certificate Authority. After processing by your CA, you shoud receive back a .crt file. Rename this file to exivity.crt and copy it, together with your exivity.key file, in your %EXIVITY_PROGRAM_PATH%\server\nginx\conf. This should overwrite the existing key and crt files

6. Now restart the Exivity Web Service Windows service, and your signed certificate should now be active.

Configuring a separate web server portal

In some cases it might be desirable to separate the webserver from the backend components. This can be achieved by installing two separate Exivity instances. One instance could be placed in a DMZ, and the second instance would then typically be deployed within a local network as shown in the following diagram:

To achieve this goal, first install Exivity on both nodes using the standard procedure described here. After installing the Exivity software on the system that should become the User Portal, create the following file in the directory%EXIVITY_PROGRAM_PATH%/server/nginx/conf/sites-enabled:

server {
    listen                  443 http2 ssl;
    server_name             localhost;

    ssl_certificate         exivity.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key     exivity.key;

    error_page              497 301 =307 https://$host:$server_port$request_uri;

    root                    web/glass;
    index                   index.html;

    charset                 utf-8;

    location ~ /v[0-9]+?/ {
        proxy_pass          https://HOSTNAME_BACKEND_PORTAL:8002;
        proxy_buffering     off;
    }
    
    location / {
        proxy_pass          https://127.0.0.1:8001;
        proxy_buffering     off;
    }

    access_log              logs/access-webproxy.log;
    error_log               logs/error-webproxy.log error;

    location = /favicon.ico {
        access_log          off;
        log_not_found       off;
    }
    location = /robots.txt  {
        access_log          off;
        log_not_found       off;
    }

    client_max_body_size    100m;
}

Make sure to replace HOSTNAME_BACKEND_PORTAL with the actual hostname or IP address of the system that serves as your Exivity Backend Portal.

The second item that requires configuration is the config.json in the %EXIVITY_PROGRAM_PATH%/web/glass directory on the User Portal:

{
  "whiteLabel": false,
  "apiHost": "https://HOSTNAME_USER_PORTAL"
}

Replace HOSTNAME_USER_PORTAL with the actual hostname or IP address of the system that serves as your Exivity User Portal. In case the User Portal should be accessible from the internet, you will need to ensure to provide the fully qualified domain of the User Portal.

Once you have applied these changes, restart the Exivity Web Service Windows services. You should now be able to access your Exivity User Portal.

Introduction

Exivity can be deployed from the AWS Market Place allowing you to have a functional Exivity solution in a matter of minutes. This tutorial will get you up and running.

AWS Marketplace Offering

Login to your AWS portal and access the Exivity offering here.

1. Click on Continue to Subscribe.

2. Read our Terms and Conditions, and when ready, click on Continue to Configuration.

3. Select the Region where you want to deploy Exivity and click on Continue to Launch.

4. In Choose Action select Launch though EC2 and click on Launch to access the Deployment Wizard.

Deployment Wizard

1. In the first screen, try to pick a recommended VM size type that has enough CPU's and Memory (see this page for general system requirements). When you are done with your selection click on Next: Configure Instance details.

2. In this section, you can select your VPC Configuration, or leave the default values.When you are done with your configuration click on Next: Add Storage.

3. In the Storage section, two drives are recommended, you can influence the Volume Type and the Size (GiB) parameters. When ready, click on Next: Add Tags.

4. In the Tags section, include the tags that are meaningful to you, as a minimum, a Name tag is recommended. Click on Next: Configure Security Group.

5. In the Security Group section, you can leave the default recommended security group or add more rules if needed. Click on Review and Launch.

6. Review the details and click on Launch, select your preferred Key Pair to connect to the instance.

In a few minutes your instance will be deployed, you can track the progress in your EC2 Dashboard:

Write down the Public IP address / Public DNS and the Instance ID once they are available.

Connecting to your Exivity instance

You can logon to your Exivity instance with RDP, but after deployment you should be able to connect to your instance using the public IP address or DNS name of your Exivity instance considering the following default URL:

• https://<Your_Public_DNS>:8001

The default admin username is admin with password Instance ID.

By default no data is loaded into the system, so you'll have to create a new Extractor for obtaining consumption data and a Transformer to process that data. A Report Definition is then created to be able to report on your consumption metrics and costs.

Next Steps

A couple of getting started guides are provided here, but feel free to drop us an e-mail or create a ticket in our support portal. We will then assist you to get your started for your specific use case