Deploying a Management Node in Google Cloud Platform

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 GCP. This section describes how to deploy the Management Node in GCP.

To deploy a Management Node on a Google Compute Engine VM:

  1. Prepare a Management Node disk image. For more information on this, see Obtaining and preparing disk images for GCE Virtual Machines.
  2. From the GCP project console, go to Compute engine > VM instances.
  3. Select Create Instance.

  4. Complete the following fields (leave all other settings as default):

    Name Enter a unique name for the instance, for example "pexipmanager".
    Zone Select an appropriate Zone. Typically you should choose a zone that is geographically close to the location from where it will be administered.
    Machine type Select 4 vCPUs (n1-standard-4).
    Boot disk

    Select the Management Node custom disk image:

    1. Select Change.
    2. Select Custom images.
    3. Select the Management Node custom disk image, e.g. "pexip-mgr-v24-3".
    4. Select a Boot disk type of SSD persistent disk.
    5. Select Select.

    Networking:

    Network tags

    Expand the Management, disk, networking, SSH keys section and select the Networking tab.

    Assign a Network tag to the instance, for example "pexip-management".

    This is the tag that should be applied to your Management Node firewall rule (see Controlling access to the Management Node).

    Networking:

    External IP

    You must decide whether or not to assign an external IP address to the instance.

    You must assign a static public/external IP address to the Management Node if you have a public cloud deployment. On a private or hybrid deployment you will typically access the Management Node over a VPC network, or host it on-premises.

    1. Expand the Management, disk, networking, SSH keys section and select the Networking tab.
    2. In the Network interfaces field, select the default interface to open the Network interface dialog.
    3. Select a Subnetwork if appropriate (e.g. if it is a private/hybrid deployment and you have created new subnets to avoid overlapping addresses in your corporate network).

    4. Select an appropriate External IP:

      • None: no external IP address will be assigned. Use this where the node does not need to have a publicly-accessible IP address.
      • Create IP address: select this option to create a static external address. You can enter a Name for the address and GCP will allocate a static IP address.
      • <external address>: you can select a specific static external address if you have already created one in advance.

    Do not select Ephemeral — if you stop and restart the instance a new address will be assigned.
    SSH keys

    An SSH key must be applied to the Management Node instance if you are not already using a project-wide key for all of the instances in your project.

    The username element of the SSH key must be "admin" or "admin@<domain>". To apply an instance-level key:

    1. Select the SSH Keys tab and select Show and edit.
    2. Select Add item. This produces a text box. Copy the contents of your public SSH key file and paste them into the text box.
    3. Modify the username element to "admin" or "admin@<domain>" if necessary.
    4. Select Save.


    See Security and SSH keys for more information.

  5. Select Create to create the instance.

  6. You must now connect over SSH into the Management Node instance to complete the installation of Pexip Infinity:

    1. Use an SSH client to access the Management Node by its IP address, supplying your private key file as appropriate.
    2. 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.

  7. Reconnect over SSH into the Management Node instance and continue the installation process:

    1. Log in again as admin.

      You are presented with another login prompt:

      [sudo] password for admin:

    2. Enter the UNIX password you just created.

      The Pexip installation wizard will begin after a short delay.

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

      1. The IP address must match the internal IP address allocated by GCE (the default should be correct).
      2. The Network mask must be 255.255.255.255.
      3. The Gateway must be the internal IP address of the gateway for the GCE region (the default should be correct).
      4. Enter your required Hostname and Domain suffix for the Management Node.
      5. Configure one or more DNS servers and NTP servers. You must override the default values if it is a private deployment.
      6. Set the Web administration username and password.
      7. Select whether to Enable incident reporting and whether 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.

  8. 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 enabled access to tcp:443 in your firewall rule, as shown in our example "pexip-allow-management" firewall rule). You can configure your Pexip Infinity platform licenses, VMRs, aliases, locations etc. as described in Initial platform configuration — GCP before you go on to add Conferencing Nodes.