This guide is for versions 3.0+ of the SME Cloud Appliance.
The Appliance is provided as a VMWARE image and in OVF Format.

For the VMWare image you will need VMWare software to run the virtual machine:

• VMWare player
• VMWare Workstation 8.x
• VMWare Fusion 4.x
• VMWare ESX/i 4.x/5.x

Please note the Appliance is provided as a 64 bit OS, VMWare disk image and OVF format. The VMWare / OVF image is setup to use DHCP, this can be changed during configuration.

If you want to run it in Microsoft Hyper-V, XEN, KVM etc you can convert the OVF image to VHD format (return to the Appliance section of the Wiki for links to how to do this.)

• 2 GB RAM for the VM
• 2 cores dedicated
• 20 GB Hard Disk Space

• 8GB+ RAM (more RAM is always better)
• 4+ Cores depending on the number of users
• 20 GB Hard Disk space
  
  Please note we recommend tuning the appliance components in production and can provide help for that. You can also increase the size of the Hard Disk by following the instructions provided by VMWare: link

To configure the appliance you will need

• A registered Domain Name that (required for production or internet access but the Appliance can be run internally and tested without this)
• A wildcard SSL certificate for your chosen domain name (required if you wish to test SSL but can be self generated)
• You will need to register the following DNS entries(please note you can change the sub-domain names as you wish) – sme.yourdomain.com – webdav.yourdomian.com – s3.yourdomain.com

(Please note webdav DNS entry should be webdav.DomaninName> e.g if domain name is sme.yourdomain.com then webdav url should be webdavsme.yourdomain.com.)

• An IP address that is configured to point to the domains
• An email address with SMTP server details to connect to that account. This will be used to send emails.
• A catch all email address if you want to use the SME Filebox functionality. You will need IMAP server details for this email address

You will need the following ingress ports open:

80, 443, 21, 990

If you want to use FTP/S then you will need to configure the firewall to allow FTP passive connections.

The Appliance can attach to all the storage providers supported by SME. You can see a list at http://storagemadeeasy.com/cloud_list.

To attach your local storage you will need to provide an FTP or WebDav interface on top of your local storage.

You will require the Authentication Details and License key that you were provided in an email to be able to configure the Appliance. Please have these to hand.

The configuration server allows you to configure

• Static IP address
• Domain name
• SSL certificate

Start the VMWare instance and ssh into the appliance. The IP address is displayed in the console.

Note if you don’t see an IP address please contact your system admin to enable DHCP or if DHCP is not possible for your environment then login to the Appliance as the smeconfiguser and run the following command to start the script:

cd installer
./smenetconf.pl

This will invoke a wizard that will enable a static network IP address to be added.

Please note that on first login it is strongly recommended to change the password. To do this use the password command below:

 passwd

If you wish to configure the Appliance DNS and SSL certificates then, after login, you can launch the Appliance installer.

If you wish to simply check out the features of the web Appliance and use the Appliance only in IP mode (rather than DNS) and test clients over http only you can navigate straight to the Appliance using the IP address and login using the authentication details you will have been provided in an email.

To move forward and configure the appliance DNS / SSL then either logged directly in to the Appliance, or from an ssh session, enter:

cd installer
./configserver.pl

This will start the configuration server on port 8080. Please make sure that you shutdown the configuration server after you have finished configuring the appliance.

Once the configuration server has been started, on your local machine, in the browser open the following URL: http://IP Address:8080

You should see the Welcome Screen.

To start configuration, please click Configuration link:

The Configuration page shows different options that you can configure

In the “SME Server Hostname Settings” options you set the domain names that will be used to access the File Server.

You should have the IP address that you want to use configured in your DNS server. This change requires a reboot of the appliance.

In the “SME Server Network Settings” the Admin can set the static IP address, Gateway, IP Mask and DNS server to resolve hostnames. This change requires a reboot of the appliance.

If you check the Apply to SME configuration only checkbox then changes are only made to SME components. This is useful if you have configured the network settings direcly in the operating system or are deploying the appliance in an IaaS e.g Amazon EC2 and do not want to change the operating system network settings.

If you enter the wrong settings, you will not be able to ssh into the appliance. In this case, login from the console as smeconfiguser

cd installer and enter the following command:

./restore-system-settings

This will set the configuration to default settings and you can start with default configuration

The File Server uses https to communicate with the clients for security. For https to work correctly you need wildcard SSL certificates that matches the domain name that you have configured. The SSL certificate should match the host name that you have configured.

This will require a reboot.

Please Note that if you don’t set SSL certificates then some native clients that use https will not be able to communicate with the appliance.

To generate a CSR if you are applying for certificates please see http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/ssl/ssl_faq.html#realcert

If you wish to use a self-signed certificate to test https then we suggest following steps 1 to 4 in this external guideto generate the necessary certificates.

The guide shows the use of the “openssl” utility, which is available on the command line of the SME appliance. Once you have followed this guide you will have three files, server.crt; server.csr;server.key.

Once you have these run the SME Config installer open server.crt in a text editor and paste the content into the “SSL public certificate text”. Similarly paste the contents of server.key into the “SSL certificate private key” text input.

Now follow the wizard to save the settings and at the end choose the reboot option. You should now be set to use private certificate SSL but note you cannot use these outside of an internal network unless the IP address is available externally.

Here you can update the appliance with the latest release. You can check for a new version here. When the appliance is updated with the new version, the installed version is saved and allows you to rollback to the previous installed version.

Smeconfiguser has permissions to reboot the server. You can reboot from the ssh console or using the configuration tool. sudo /usr/bin/reboot sudo /usr/bin/poweroff

Once you have configured and rebooted your appliance, open a browser at http://yourdomain and you will be able to login as appladmin

Using your browser login as appladmin . Change the password after logging in for the first time. You will see the home screen, on the right hand side you will see different options to customise the website.

The appladmin account is used to configure the functionality of the appliance. Depending on your key different options will be available.

Enter the license key and depending on the key new functionality will become available in the right hand side menu. If the key is expired or you have not entered a valid key then you will only be able to use clouduser account.

After you have entered the license key you will see more options.

Companies can brand and change logos and look and feel for the Appliance.

The Color scheme can be managed at a very granular level:

Advanced usage also enabled custom CSS style sheets to be applied.

User Registration can be customized using the options in the User registration section.

The SME Appliance is provided with a comprehensive PDF annotation suite. The Annotations can be enabled for users at a package level.

Please refer to the SOLR and Burn Docs here for guidance on how to configure the PDF burn service.

The default email templates that are used with the Appliance for customer interactions can be changed here.

This screen allows you enable/disable appliance wide functionality.

The File Server uses an external email SMTP server to send registration and notification emails. Here you enter the account details that will be used to send emails.

The SME Filebox feature provides each user a dedicated email address for a share folder. This is an optional feature. A user can send an email with attachment to the Filebox address. For this you will need a 'catch all' email address and IMAP server.

SME appliance can use Zoho to view and edit MS Office (Word, Powerpoint and Excel) and RTF documents. You will need to register for Zoho API at http://apihelp.wiki.zoho.com/ and enter the API key.

Also if you want to add your development keys for cloud services you can do here

Please see the SOLR configuration guide here for search configuration.

You can test email templates here

Here you will see background tasks that you have initiated as an administrator.

As an admin you can send users messages

The only data that is stored is data about the files and any classification information the user adds. This can be backed up for disaster recovery (as this data is stored in a database it can also be made highly available.)

You can change the ApplAdmin password.

You can see a list of all users and the packages that are assigned to them by clicking on Users on the left hand side.

You can change a users password, activate or inactivate and delete users and also configure the functionality available to him.

You can also edit users

To Add a user Click on “Add User” and enter the details. A new user can also be added using the API.

You can edit and create User packages that are assigned to users. Sample packages are provided. User Packages allow you configure available functionality and default setting for new users.

This is the end of the configuration guide for the SME Cloud Appliance.