Deployment Preparations

Requirements

Setting up the home and aura user

Clone the aura repository to the server(s) you want to deploy AURA Web or AURA Playout at.

We recommend using /opt/aura as your home for the AURA installation.

sudo git clone https://gitlab.servus.at/aura/aura.git /opt/aura

Next, move to that directory and create the aura user. This user is used for running all services.

make aura-user.add

The directory under /opt/aura is now owned by aura:aura.

User permissions

All resources will be owned by the user aura, hence we recommend performing all subsequent commands as this user or to add the current user to the aura group.

Selecting the release

First check for available releases.

git tag

This command will show you all tags which should correspond to the releases available. Alternatively you can take a look at releases.aura.radio.

Then switch to the release you’d like to use.

git checkout tags/<release-version>

Latest, unreleased state on the main branch

In case you want deploy the current development state, just take the latest commit on the main branch. That’s the state which is checked out by default. While we try to keep the main branch as stable as possible, we cannot guarantee it being functional at all times. So please use it at your own risk.

Setting up the Audio Store

The Audio Store is a folder which is utilized by Tank and Engine to exchange audio files.

Assuming both, Engine and Tank are hosted on different machines, audio folders must by shared using some network share.

In case you are hosting Engine and Tank on the same machine, you can skip this step. Just think about pointing the settings the relevant audio directories, or create a symlink to do so behind the curtains.

By default the audio store is located in /opt/aura/audio. There are following subdirectories expected:

  • source: holding all audio files from the media asset repository. Written by Tank and read by Engine.

  • fallback: populate this folder with audio files to be played randomly, in cases where nothing is scheduled.

  • playlist: used for M3U audio playlists.

  • recordings: the recorder stores its recorded blocks here.

Share Type

Then, there’s the question how the share is managed. Feasible options include:

Please evaluate for yourself what the most failsafe solution is. The next chapter outlines pro and cons of different scenarios.

Share Location

You have following options where your share can be located:

  1. Engine and all other AURA components (Tank, Dashboard, Steering) are running on the same instance. This is the most simple solution, as Engine and Tank can share the same directory locally. But this scenario requires some more sophisticated tuning of the system resources to avoid e.g. some overload of multiple Uploads in Tank may affect the performance of engine. You can eliminate this risk by setting CPU and memory limits for Steering, Dashboard and Tank using Docker or systemd-cgroups. A disadvantage here is the case of maintenance of system reboot. This would mean that all components are offline at once.

  2. Physical directory where the Engine lives, mounted to Tank. This may cause an issue with the mount, when the network connection to Engine is unavailable or the instance is rebooting.

  3. Physical directory where the Tank lives, mounted to Engine. This may cause an issue with the mount, when the network connection to Tank is unavailable or the instance is rebooting.

  4. Central Data Store or Storage Box which is mountet to Engine and Tank. In this case a downtime of the store make both, Engine and Tank dysfunctional.

  5. Replicated storage solution using Gluster, both Engine and Tank have their virtual audio directory mounted. That’s the ideal approach, because if any of the instances is down, the other has all the data available.

In any case, you should think about some backup solution involving this directory.

Advanced Configuration

In the following steps, you will be advised to copy the provided sample.env file to .env. In most common setup scenarios all configuration done in such .env file is sufficient.

For some more advanced setups or debug purposes, there are also sample configuration files for each service under /opt/aura/config/services/sample-config available. To overwrite any service configuration, simply copy its configuration file to the parent services folder.

Only use these overrides if you are an advanced user, or are advised to do so.

Deployment

AURA can be deployed using Docker and Docker Compose, allowing custom-tailored orchestration.

In general we recommend the Docker Compose variant.