Q100657: Creating a Foundry licensing and a MySQL server for Flix in the cloud

  1. Foundry
  2. Flix
  3. Flix Installation and Getting Started

SUMMARY

 

This article is part of a series intended to show an example of how to set up Flix in the Cloud. You can find the full series in Q100655: Creating a Flix setup in the Cloud. 
The steps outlined below are about how to set up a Licence and MySQL server which can be used to access your Flix cloud setup. The article assumes some knowledge of networking and Linux administration, and it is targeted toward IT administrators.

 

MORE INFORMATION

 

This guide uses Amazon (AWS) services as an example, but Flix works equally well with other cloud providers such as Google and Microsoft. This article assumes common security practices, but please ensure compliance with any studio security policies. Follow the steps below to create server instances for MySQL and Foundry licensing:

  1. Go to https://aws.amazon.com/ and Sign In to the Console (an AWS account is required).
  2. Under Build a solution, click the Launch a Virtual Machine link.

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  3. Under the Name and tags section enter “MySQL-Licence-server”. This will help you later to distinguish the server you are creating in your AWS account (it will be named MySQL-Licence-server).

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  4. Search for “CentOS 7”. Use “CentOS 7 (x86_64) - with Updates HVM”
  5. Select t2.medium type (2 cores 4GB) or larger as the Instance type. It is recommended for small to medium size studios. For large studios, we recommend an instance with more resources.

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  6. Change the storage size to 20GB. The Flix database can grow over time and need some extra storage space.

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  7. If you already have a key pair, go ahead and use it. If not, click Create new key pair, enter a name for the key, and click on Create Key Pair to download a .pem file. Keep it safe, as this will be the only way to access your instance.
  8. Make sure you use the same VPC and subnet you used to create your VPN server.
  9. To change the default network settings, click on the Edit link next to Network Settings and:

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    1. Make sure Auto-assign Public IP option is Enabled.
    2. Allow access to the following ports over TCP: 22, 3306, 4101, 4500 Add the subnet VLAN as the source. In this example, it is 172.31.16.0/20.
    3. At the bottom of the Networking section, click on the “Advanced Networking Configuration”

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    4. Under “Network interface 1”, add a custom “Primary IP”. This IP will need to be in the IP range for the subnet you are using. In this example, it is 172.31.16.102.
  10. Check that all the details are correct, then click Launch Instance.
  11. A popup will appear asking you to select a key pair. Select the key you created.
  12. Wait until the instance is done initializing.
  13. The MySQL and Foundry license server is only accessible through the internal IP address, and only when connected to the VPN created for this cloud setup. Connect to the VPN first and use ssh to connect to the license and MySQL server using its internal IP created in step 8. In this example, the internal IP of the server is 172.31.16.102 and KEY is the keypair created for the instance. You need to open a terminal and run an ssh command like this to connect to the server:
    ssh -i KEY centos@172.31.16.102
  14. Update the server with the following command:
    sudo yum update -y
  15. Install MySQL 8 on the server just created using the following guide Q100551 Installing MySQL 8 on Red Hat/CentOS 7 or Rocky 9
  16. Install the Foundry Licence Utility (FLU)  and a Flix floating license. Refer to this article if unsure of the steps: Q100534: How to use Foundry Licensing Utility on a headless machine. Make sure to set the ISV to use a dedicated port (in this example 4500) as described in this article Q100374: How to make the RLM server use a dedicated ISV port' If you don’t use a dedicated port, the licensing software will use a random port every time and you will need to open the firewall to the port used. Make sure you have a VM enabler license, as cloud instances are considered VMs. You can learn more about the VM enabler license here: Q100185: Will my licenses work on a Virtual Machine

 

All cloud and third-party technologies mentioned in this article are reference examples only and are not supported by Foundry. The above list of steps and example setups are provided as guidance only and are not intended to be followed and used in production. Please coordinate with your IT Administrator to set up a similar network or cloud workflow that your studio can use.

This guide uses the latest version of Amazon and Foundry technologies available in June 2022.

 

FURTHER READING

 

This article is part of a series of articles explaining how to set up a Flix cluster in the cloud behind a VPN server. The full list can be found here: 

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