Deploying a Management Node in Azure

As with all Pexip Infinity deployments, you must first deploy the Management Node before deploying any Conferencing Nodes. In a hybrid cloud deployment the Management Node may be deployed in the corporate network or in Azure. This section describes how to deploy the Management Node in Azure.

To deploy a Management Node in Azure:

  1. Create a VM instance using the prepared Management Node disk image. For more information on this, see:

  2. If you are using SSH key-based authentication (instead of password-based authentication), after the Management Node instance has booted, you must SSH into the instance to set the operating system password:

    1. Use an SSH client to access the Management Node by its private IP address, supplying your private key file as appropriate.

      If you cannot access the Management Node, check that you have allowed the appropriate source addresses in your Network Security Group inbound security rules for management traffic.

    2. Follow the login process in the SSH session:

      1. At the login prompt, enter the username admin.
      2. Supply the key passphrase, if requested.
      3. At the "Enter new UNIX password:" prompt, enter your desired password, and then when prompted, enter the password again.

      This will then log you out and terminate your SSH session.

  3. Complete the Pexip Infinity installation wizard:

    1. Connect to the Management Node:

      • If using key-based authentication: reconnect over SSH into the Management Node instance by its private IP address.
      • If using password-based authentication: you can connect via the Azure portal's serial console — go to Virtual Machines, select your Management Node VM instance, and then select Serial console.
    2. Log in as admin, and — if you are using password-based authentication — enter the password you supplied when using the ARM template.

      You are presented with another login prompt:

      [sudo] password for admin:

    3. Enter the operating system administrator password (for SSH key-based authentication this is the password you just created in the previous step; for password-based authentication you must enter again the password you supplied when using the ARM template).

      The Pexip installation wizard will begin after a short delay.

    4. Complete the installation wizard to apply basic configuration to the Management Node:

      IP address
      Network mask
      Gateway
      Accept the defaults for the IP address, Network mask and Gateway settings.
      Hostname
      Domain suffix
      Enter your required Hostname and Domain suffix for the Management Node.
      DNS servers Configure one or more DNS servers. You must override the default values if it is a private deployment.
      NTP servers Configure one or more NTP servers. You must override the default values if it is a private deployment.
      Web administration username
      Password
      Set the Web administration username and password.
      Enable incident reporting Select whether or not to Enable incident reporting.
      Send deployment and usage statistics to Pexip Select whether or not to Send deployment and usage statistics to Pexip.

      The DNS and NTP servers at the default addresses are only accessible if your instance has a public IP address.
      The installation wizard will fail if the NTP server address cannot be resolved and reached.

    After successfully completing the wizard, the SSH connection will be lost as the Management Node reboots.

  4. After a few minutes you will be able to use the Pexip Infinity Administrator interface to access and configure the Management Node (remember to use https to connect to the node if you have only configured https access rules in your security group). You can configure your Pexip Infinity platform licenses, VMRs, aliases, locations etc. as described in Initial platform configuration — Azure before you go on to add Conferencing Nodes.