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Download and Import

Transcription:Batch   Deployments:Virtual Appliance

Downloading the Appliance

Speechmatics will provide a download link through the knowledgebase section of the Support Portal. The latest version of the Appliance can be located within the knowledgebase. Select the required version number within the "Batch Virtual Appliance" area that you wish to download. You can then view the download link and all associated documentation for the Virtual Appliance. Once the download link is selected the download will begin, or a save file prompt will appear, enabling the file to be saved (the exact method will depend on the web browser being used). After the download, a file with an ".ova" extension will be stored on your computer.

An account is required to access the documents and download link in the Support Portal. If an account is not available or the relevant Virtual Appliance section is not visible in the Support Portal, please reach out to Support for help.

Importing the Appliance

Once the .ova file has been downloaded, it is ready to be imported into your hypervisor. Please ensure that the host meets the System Requirements, then based on the hypervisor environment follow the instructions below.

Changing the default password​

By default, the Appliance can be accessed over SSH with the username smadmin and password changeme. We recommend either:

  • disabling password access and setting up access via an SSH key, described here

or

  • blocking access to port 22 (ssh)

VMware​

TO DO​

VMware Workstation Player​

TO DO​

Amazon Web Services​

This section explains how to create a Virtual Appliance EC2 instance on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform by using the AWS VM Import/Export tool. This tool is designed for importing VM images from the OVA file format provided by Speechmatics. You will import the image as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), from which you can then launch machine instances.

The information in this section is taken from the official AWS documentation and parts of it have been extracted to focus more on the particulars of the Speechmatics Virtual Appliance. For more details of the Amazon VM image import process, please refer to their documentation

Prerequisites​

There are a few prerequisites that you will need to have set up before you can follow the instructions in this section:

Please follow the recommendations on configuration of the AWS CLI by referring to the Getting Started guide.

Uploading the OVA File to S3​

This section describes the process of uploading the Speechmatics OVA file to an Amazon S3 bucket from where it can be imported as an AMI instance. We recommend using a bucket in the same region where you want the AMI to be created and made available.

Once you've identified or created the S3 bucket on your account where the Speechmatics Virtual Appliance OVA will be uploaded to, you can use any of the tools below to help with the upload of the OVA file.

For more information about the multipart uploads, see the AWS documentation.

Importing the OVA as an AMI Instance​

After the Virtual Appliance OVA file has been successfully uploaded to an S3 bucket, it's time to import the image.

See the AWS documentation that covers importing an image for full details.

The steps that you will perform in this section include (in order):

  • Creating a Service Role on your AWS account
  • Assigning a Role Policy to this Service Role
  • Importing the OVA for the Virtual Appliance from the S3 bucket file

Creating an Import Service Role​

First of all, a service role needs to be created on your AWS account. This allows certain operations, including downloading images from an S3 bucket.

Create a file named trust-policy.json with the following policy:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": { "Service": "vmie.amazonaws.com" },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
      "Condition": {
        "StringEquals": {
          "sts:Externalid": "vmimport"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

Then use the create-role command from the AWS CLI to create a role named vmimport. You need to specify the full path of the trust-policy.json file:

aws iam create-role --role-name vmimport --assume-role-policy-document file://trust-policy.json

You need to ensure the that file:// prefix is prepended to the filename.

Creating a Role Policy​

Create a file named role-policy.json with the following policy. Where you see ova-bucket it will need to be replaced with the name of the S3 bucket where the OVA file is stored.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["s3:GetBucketLocation", "s3:GetObject", "s3:ListBucket"],
      "Resource": ["arn:aws:s3:::ova-bucket", "arn:aws:s3:::ova-bucket/*"]
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ec2:ModifySnapshotAttribute",
        "ec2:CopySnapshot",
        "ec2:RegisterImage",
        "ec2:Describe*"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Use the put-role-policy command to attach the policy to the role. You must specify the full path to the location of the role-policy.json:

aws iam put-role-policy --role-name vmimport --policy-name vmimport --policy-document file://role-policy.json

Importing the OVA​

Importing the Virtual Appliance image (OVA) to Amazon EC2 as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is the next step.

Create a file named containers.json with the following content. Where you see ova-bucket it will need to be replaced with the name of the S3 bucket where the OVA file is stored and where you see example-virtual-appliance.ova it will need to be replaced with the name of the OVA file to be imported (e.g. batch-appliance-<version>-maxi-<build-number>.ova or rt-appliance-<version>-maxi-<build-number>.ova).

[
  {
    "Description": "Virtual Appliance OVA",
    "Format": "ova",
    "UserBucket": {
      "S3Bucket": "ova-bucket",
      "S3Key": "example-virtual-appliance.ova"
    }
  }
]

Use the import-image command to create an import task (Specify the full path to the location of the containers.json):

aws ec2 import-image --description "Virtual Appliance OVA" --disk-containers file://containers.json

The resulting JSON output will show an ImportTaskId which you can use to check the status of the import task. You do this by running the describe-import-image-tasks command:

aws ec2 describe-import-image-tasks --import-task-ids import-ami-abcd1234

You need to replace the task identifier with the ImportTaskId for your import task (import-ami-abcd1234 in this example).

When the status is in the completed state the AMI is ready to use.

Security​

For more background on creating security groups refer to the official AWS documentation. See the Ports and Protocols section for a list of the ports that are used. These ports should be opened so that you can submit jobs and manage and monitor the Speechmatics Virtual Appliance.

Batch Virtual Appliance​

If you set up HTTPS as described in SSL Configuration then you only need to expose port 443.

Launching a Virtual Appliance​

Now that the Virtual Appliance has been imported, it will be available as an AMI which can be launched as an instance. To launch a Speechmatics Virtual Appliance, do the following:

  • Login to the AWS console and find your image under EC2 Service | Images
  • Right-click the image and choose Launch
  • Refer to the System Requirements section of the Speechmatics Quick Start Guide or Admin Guide to identify how much system resources is required for your setup. Choose the instance type that meets your requirements
  • Choose Review and Launch from the console. Set up the Key Pair if required and choose Launch again

Full instructions for launching instances can be found here.