Installation
The installation roadmap is a description of the high-level steps for installing HCL™ Accelerate.
HCL™ Accelerate is provided in several editions. The Standard Edition (SE) is full-featured and comes with 24/7 customer support. You can use the Standard Edition for free for 60 days. You can also use the free-to-use Community Edition. The Community Edition is full featured but does not provide customer support and limits users to two concurrent sessions.
Technology overview
HCL™ Accelerate consists of services and other tools that are stored in Docker containers. A Docker container is a single unit that contains a software application, often called a service, and the environment needed to run it. Containers can be created and destroyed as needed.
HCL™ Accelerate consists of over 10 containers. Because of the number of containers, another application, called a container orchestrator, is used to manage the containers. Which orchestrator you use is up to you. Docker Compose is often used for trials and tests. For production environments, Kubernetes or another Kubernetes-based orchestrator, such as OpenShift, is preferred.
Kubernetes installations are managed with resources called templates. Each template describes a
separate resource. If you perform an OpenShift installation, the templates are stored in the
/templates
folder in your installation directory. If you use Kubernetes to install
HCL™ Accelerate, the resources are combined into a single file called a Helm chart. For Kubernetes-based
installations, you can change a resource by modifying the affected template file or the
corresponding resource in the Helm chart. For Docker Compose installations, resources are defined in
a file named docker-compose.yml
that is found in the installation folder.
Technology | Docker | Kubernetes |
---|---|---|
Product core configuration | 15 containers | 43 resources, 1 Helm chart |
External communication | 13 exposed ports | Ingress for communication. NodePort exposed for external communication. |
Storage | 4 volumes | Persistent volume claims |
Preparing your installation
Both editions require an access key. You apply the free access key during installation. When you license the SE version, in addition to your access key, you receive a permanent license key.
Download the installation files for your environment:
- Installing HCL Accelerate with Docker Compose
- Installing on Kubernetes
- Installing as an OpenShift application
- Installing on ICP
If you are evaluating HCL™ Accelerate and are unsure about which versions to install, many users find the Docker Compose installation process to be easiest because it is the most automated.
In outline, the installation process consists of the following general steps:
Additional installation details are included in the following topics: