Appliance installation

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Appliance installation refers to physical and virtual (VMware/HyperV) machine types. If this is the first appliance in a Collective, go to The first Controller section after successfully powering it up.

Physical appliance

The physical appliance sold by AppGate comes with Appgate SDP software pre-installed. Because the software is pre-installed, the installation process involves racking it up and ensuring the right connectivity exists. Details of the specifications and how to connect it are covered in the Hardware appliance spec section. If the appliance already exists but needs to be updated to the latest version of software, refer to Upgrading appliances section.

Virtual appliance

Before attempting to build a virtual appliance, ensure that your chosen hypervisor meets the minimum version requirements. If you are just testing Appgate SDP, ensure you have the following resources available for each test instance:

  • A minimum of 2 CPU.

  • A minimum of 4 GB of memory.

  • A minimum of 40 GB of Storage.

  • At least 1 Network card.

  • Support for AES-NI.

NOTE

These parameters are not suitable for production use. For more detailed information, refer to the Instance sizing section. For a complete understanding of how to specify all the key parameters for an appliance that will be used in a production environment, refer to the latest Performance and Scaling white paper.

For guidance:

  • It is recommended that Controller has 6-12 vCPUs.

  • The Gateway needs enough vCPUs for the throughput required and uses significant amounts of RAM as the number of rules, users, and events increase.

  • The LogServer should always be deployed on a separate appliance and will require plenty of disk space and RAM.

  • LogForwarders, Metrics Aggregators and Connectors are not very resource hungry.

  • Portals need both RAM and vCPU according to the number of users.

Virtualization platforms

For hypervisors, you will need to obtain a copy of the software as an ISO file or a disk image. Several options are provided in AppGate's secure Download Center, where the hypervisor minimum version requirements are also detailed.

A screenshot of different ISO files from the Download Center.

For Hyper-V and VMware, separate example installation guides are provided. A similar process can be followed for other virtualization platforms that use ISOs. These guides cover:

  • Installation pre-requisites and recommended system settings

  • The first appliance installation, or creating a Controller

  • Installing subsequent appliances from the seed file generated when configuring another appliance in the Controller

The installation guide for a virtual appliance on Hyper V is available here.

The installation guide for a virtual appliance on VMware is available here.

NOTE

We have seen random appliance lockups which appear to be caused by the VMware host not handling enabled, but non-present, CD devices (like virtual ISO images) properly. This behavior also appears to be Linux build dependent. It is therefore strongly recommended to disable or remove the CD devices completely from the VMware guests (the appliance) after installation and/or seeding.

Checking the authenticity and integrity of downloaded files

The checksums.zip file, available alongside the software, includes AppGate’s public key to check the authenticity of the .asc file. The AppGate public GPG key can also be downloaded here: appgate-inc.pub

The .asc file can be used to check the integrity of the software file. To check an .iso file: on a Linux machine, open the checksums.zip archive, extract the contents to a directory, go to that directory, and then:

  • import the public key file:
    gpg --import appgate-inc.pub  

  • trust the key:
    gpg --import appgate-inc.pub
    gpg --edit-key 5635CFCADCF8A718
    gpg> trust
    gpg> 5
    gpg> quit

  • verify the relevant file (6.1.x.iso in this example):
    gpg --verify Appgate-SDP-6.1.x.iso.asc Appgate-SDP-6.1.x.iso

  • You should see something like this:

gpg: Signature made Mon 20 Mar 2023 12:35:01 PM CET
gpg:                using RSA key 6F8421F574035654BAF6E51E5635CFCADCF8A718
gpg: Good signature from "Appgate Cybersecurity, INC."
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg: There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.

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