Installing Edge

Requirements

Installation requirements

Domain name validation for Edge license key generation

To procure the Edge license file, you must provide the right domain name to the Cumulocity’s logistics team for Edge license key generation.

When you provide the domain name, consider the following points:

• The domain name does not need to be a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). For example, to access the Edge appliance with the domain name myown.iot.com, request the Edge license for myown.iot.com or iot.com (without the subdomain myown).

• If you exclude the subdomain from the domain name in the Edge license, you must possess a wildcard SSL certificate which can be used with multiple subdomains (myown or others) of the domain (iot.com).
  For example, if you provide iot.com as the domain name, you must possess an SSL certificate for .iot.com.

• If you have an Internationalized Domain Name (IDN), then you must provide the translated ASCII equivalent domain name.
  For example, if your domain name is myown.iöt.com (for example, containing ö), then you must use myown.xn–it-fka.com.
  Also, provide the same translated ASCII equivalent domain name as the tenant domain name during the Edge installation process.
  

  Info

  An Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) is an internet domain name that contains at least one label, in whole or in part, in a language-specific script or alphabet, such as Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Hebrew or the Latin alphabet-based characters with diacritics or ligatures, such as French. The internationalization of domain names is a technical solution to translate names written in language-native scripts into an ASCII text representation that is compatible with the Domain Name System. See Wikipedia.

• Ensure that you adhere to the following domain name validation rules:

  • The domain name must be a combination of case-insensitive alphanumeric characters separated by dot ( . ) or hyphen ( - ).
    • Cannot contain any letters of languages like Chinese, Latin or Arabic.
    • Cannot contain any special characters like (+ , ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) ; \ \ / | < > \ " \ ’ ) other than dot ( . ) or hyphen ( - ).
  • The length of the domain name including the dot must not exceed 255 characters.
  • The domain name must contain at least one dot.
  • Each segment of the domain name must be separated by a dot.
    • The domain name must be between 1 to 63 characters long.
    • The Top-Level Domain (TLD) which refers to the last segment of the domain name must be between two to six characters long.
    • The domain name cannot begin or end with a hyphen.

Network connectivity

The following network ports must be reachable from the local network:

• HTTPS
• MQTT over TLS
• SSH, only for configuring the appliance

If Edge should communicate with the cloud, the following ports of www.cumulocity.com (or another instance) must be available:

• HTTPS
• MQTT over TLS

There is no internet connection required during installation. Internet connection during runtime is optional, and only used if this is configured in the Data Broker.

Incoming traffic

The following ports must be enabled by default in order to accept traffic from users and devices on the internet (see Setting up port forwarding):

Depending on additional integrations more ports must be opened.

Outgoing Traffic

The core node must be able to connect to the internet. Ports required to outside are:

Depending on the installed integrations (email, SMS, and so on), different ports might have to be opened in order to make these services available to the Cumulocity platform. The descriptions of these ports are delivered with the corresponding integrations.

Depending on the DNS and NTP setup it might be the case that DNS (UDP/53) and NTP (UDP/123) connections to the internet must be possible from all hosts.

Hardware requirements

The virtual machine has the following minimum hardware requirements:

These are the minimum system requirements to enable the microservice hosting feature. If the microservice requires additional system resources, you must configure the system requirements accordingly in addition to minimum system requirements. For example, if the microservice requires 2 CPU cores and 4 GB of RAM, then the VM must have 6 CPU cores (4 cores for VM + 2 cores for microservice) and 12 GB of RAM (8 GB for VM + 4 GB for microservice).

Installing Edge using the UI

To install Edge using the user interface:

1. Connect and start the Edge appliance in the hypervisor. Wait until the network configuration screen appears.

   Info

   The network configuration blue screen does not appear post installation. After the installation, you must use the Administration application or the REST API to configure the network.

2. Configure the network for your Edge appliance, see the sample screenshot.

   Important

   While configuring the network on VMware based hypervisors, do not us the IP addresses:

   • X.X.X.1 (used by VMnet8 network adapter on host)

   • X.X.X.2 (used by VMnet8 network adapter’s gateway)

   • X.X.X.254 (used by VMnet8 network adapter’s DHCP server)

3. Press Enter to save the network configuration.

   Note down the URL to perform the installation. In the screenshot above, the URL is https://192.168.66.10/apps/installation/.

4. Open the URL in a browser to start the installation process.

   Read the prerequisites and ensure that you have the domain name, SSL certificate and key associated with your domain name, and the license file.

5. Click Start Installation.

6. Create an administrator account for the guest operating system below Guest OS admin.

7. Provide a password for the root user of the guest operating system below Guest OS root, and click Next.

   Important

   Do not use the root credentials to perform any task. The root credentials must be used only when asked by Cumulocity support personnel. Using it otherwise might void the appliance support.

8. Create an administrator account to access the “edge” tenant and the Management tenant, and click Next.

9. Provide a fully qualified domain name below Domain name.

   For example, “myown.iot.com”. Here, you must have the Edge license for the domain name iot.com or myown.iot.com.

   The domain name must adhere to all the domain name validation rules as described in Domain name validation.

10. Provide the Edge license file associated with your domain name below Licence file.

11. Provide the SSL certificate file and the SSL certificate key file.

    If you do not have an SSL certificate, select Generate self-signed certificate to generate one.

12. Click Install.

During the installation, the certificates are updated in the Edge appliance. If these certificates are not accepted by your browser, the browser does not get the progress of the installation. In such case, you must refresh the browser and follow the browser instructions for more details. The installation takes some time to complete. After the installation is complete, the “Cumulocity Edge installation is now complete” message appears.

Next, click Open Cumulocity Edge.

Installing Edge using the REST APIs

To install Edge using the REST APIs, see the edge/install API in the Cumulocity Edge OpenAPI Specification.

Accessing the Edge appliance

You access the Edge appliance using a domain name in a web browser.

Supported browsers

Supported browsers in this version are:

• Microsoft Edge (latest Chromium-based version)
• Mozilla Firefox (latest Extended Support Release [1])
• Google Chrome [2]

[1] Only the latest Extended Support Release of Mozilla Firefox is explicitly supported. Possible incompatibilities will be removed during the regular maintenance process of Cumulocity. Due to frequent upgrades of the Mozilla Firefox consumer release, the compatibility of the Edge appliance with other versions of Mozilla Firefox cannot be guaranteed.

[2] The Google Chrome support is based on Google Chrome Version 84. Due to frequent version upgrades of Google Chrome, compatibility of the Edge appliance with future versions of Google Chrome cannot be fully guaranteed. Possible incompatibilities will be removed during the regular maintenance process of Cumulocity.

You may also use recent smartphone and tablet web browsers. We have tested our products with the following mobile web browsers:

• Chrome on Android (latest version) on Galaxy smartphones and tablets
• Safari on iOS (latest version) on Apple iPhone and iPad

Accessing the Edge appliance using the domain name

The Edge appliance is accessible using the domain name configured as part of the installation.

There are two ways to configure the accessibility with the domain names:

• Add an entry of the domain name and IP mapping in the DNS servers.
  OR
• Add the alias to access the Edge appliance through the domain name provided during installation. This must be performed on each client host on which the Edge appliance is accessed.

Adding the alias

On Linux machines, add the following entry to /etc/hosts:

<IP address> <domain_name>

Use the IP address provided during the network configuration. For example, the default value for Hyper-V is 192.168.66.10.

On Windows machines, add the same entry to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts.

Ping the <domain_name> to verify it.

ping <domain_name>

If the ping is successful, the DNS resolution is working properly.

Using <domain_name>, the Edge appliance can be connected from the host operating system (operating system which is hosting the Edge appliance). If you want to connect the Edge appliance within your LAN, which is outside of the host operating system, you must do the following:

• On VMware platforms, port forwarding must be enabled as mentioned in Port forwarding on a VMware platform.
• The DNS entry must be added in your LAN’s DNS server/Name server. The DNS entry must have the domain name and the IP address of the host operating system. Note that this is not the Edge appliance IP.

To access the Edge appliance

Enter the URL in the browser:

https://<domain_name>

The Edge appliance login screen appears. Log in with your credentials created during the installation.

• To log in to the Management tenant, prefix the username with management:

  • Username: management/<Edge admin username>
  • Password: password provided during the installation

• To log in to the “edge” tenant, use the Edge admin credentials or prefix the Edge admin username with edge:

  • Username: edge/<Edge admin username>
  • Password: password provided during the installation

If you are logging in for the first time, you will see a cookie banner at the bottom:

• Click Agree and Proceed to accept the default cookie settings (required and functional cookies enabled).
• Click Reject all to reject all of the default cookie settings.
• Click Preferences to select your individual cookie preferences:
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• Click See also our Privacy Notice to open the Cumulocity privacy statement with details on the Cumulocity privacy policy.

Select the Remember me checkbox if you want the browser to remember your credentials, so that you do not have to enter them again when opening the application the next time. This is especially convenient if you frequently switch between Cumulocity applications, as the Edge appliance requests you to authenticate each time when starting an application. You can make the browser “forget” your credentials by explicitly logging out.

Finally, click Login to enter the Edge appliance. Initially, you will be taken to the Cockpit application (if not configured differently).

To explicitly logout, click the User button at the right of the top bar, then select Logout from the context menu.

How to reset your password

To reset your password, you must first configure the “reset password” template and email server settings in the Edge appliance. For information about configuring the email server, see Configuring the email server.

For information about resetting the password, see How to reset your password.

How to access pages using URLs

For information about accessing pages using the URLs, see How to access pages using URLs.

Security harden the Edge appliance

For information about security configuration, see Configuring security.

Available applications

See Available applications for more information.

UI functionalities and features

See UI functionalities and features for more information.

User options and settings

See User options and settings for more information.

Knowledge Hub

See Knowledge Hub for more information.