Single-Server Deployment

FineBI is an intelligent business analysis and service platform in B/S port. It can be deployed on a server through the web application server, providing a cloud server for companies. Users can visit and use the service platform only by one browser.

This article will introduce the requirements for configuring FineBI software and hardware.

Before we start the deployment, we need to prepare the hardware and software to make our deployment process smoother.

Installation Files

Web Application Package

There are three types of deployment files: direct install, for server, and web application.

JDK & Web Application Server

If you are using a server deployment package or have already set up your own Tomcat and JDK environment, the following files are not required.

The FineBI deployment using Tomcat is taken as an example here.

Server Recommendation

Server hardware recommendations can be found in Preparations for Environment Deployment of FineBI Project- FineBI Document.

Contact technical support if there is any question.

Software Environment Recommendation

Server Operating System

Server operating systems like Linux, Windows, and MacOS are all supported, and the Linux system is preferred rather than Windows.

Install it on MacOS only for local tests.

Virtual machine systems are not recommended, as they can be less performant and prone to problems.

FineDB Database

The built-in database for the FineBI is the HSQL database that cannot be accessed by multiple threads.

For formal use, migrate the external FineDB database for better performance.

Note:

Taking external databases as business databases that will be frequently used is not recommended. Use an independently deployed database instead.

Operating System Configuration 

1. Operating System User

If you are a super admin, there will be no issues with directory file permissions. However, if you are a regular user, pay attention to the directory permissions.

a. Web Application Directory 

The system user should have read, write, and execute permissions for the entire Tomcat directory, subdirectories, and files,  to launch FineBI. Limit the permissions of user groups and other users to read-only, to avoid other users modifying or deleting the files of FineBI, resulting in abnormal projects.

Refer to the following command:

chmod -R 744 /home/finebi/tomcat-bi

During the actual deployment, we need to pay special attention to the user switch. 

If there is a switch of different users, and there is a file change in the Tomcat deployment directory, or if even the FineBI is started, we must switch to the super user and change the owner of Tomcat and its subdirectories to the regular user.

Refer to the following command:

chown -R finebi:finebi /home/finebi/tomcat-bi

 b. Other Directories

There are a few other directories you need to be aware of, but they generally don't have permission issues.

• /home/user

After FineBI is started, hidden directories such as .Finereport110 and .FineBI60 will be generated in the directory of the startup user. 

The user directory will be different for each system user, so there will be no permissions issues due to switching users.

• /tmp

Since the default permissions for this directory are usually rwxrwxrwt, regular users also have read and write permissions, so there are no permission issues.

2. Disk Partitions

At least two separate disk partitions are recommended.

a. Partition One 

• FineBI Data Storage Directory

Extracting data takes up a lot of disk space. Separate it from the disk partition on which the project is located to avoid the risk of a full disk that will cause the project to fail or even cause file corruption.

According to the official help document recommendation, combined with the actual amount of data to evaluate the disk space size.

The default data storage path is %tomcat%/webapps/webroot/bi-data, you can modify it directly in the FineBI system later. 

For details, see Data Storage Path- FineBI Document.

• Temporary Directory 

This directory only stores temporary files, and there is an automatic cleaning mechanism for temporary files. But in some extreme cases, such as exporting a large amount of Excel files, the process will produce temporary files 8 to 10 times the size of the Excel file. Modify this directory to a larger disk partition directory.

The default temporary path is %tomcat%/temp, you can modify it later.

b. Partition Two

This partition is used to place the FineBI deployment directory, and the partition disk can be at least 100 G in size.

Apart from the above files, FineBI installation files are not large, but in the later use process, some new files will be generated, such as backup files, log files, excel files uploaded, and attachment files generated by regular scheduling, which will gradually become larger. 

Therefore, we need to reserve enough space and monitor them.

3. Inspection

Check that there are no other running software in the system.

FineBI is an IO-intensive computing system, which requires high resources such as CPU, memory, and disk IO. Only deploying FineBI on the server is recommended to avoid other running software preempting server resources, resulting in unstable operation of FineBI.

File Deployment

Just the web application deployment package webroot.zip used here requires a separate installation of the JDK and Tomcat, but if you're using the server deployment package such as tomcat-linux-x64_eng.tar.gz, you can skip this step and just unzip it and get going.

JDK Installation

Download the JDK installation package and install it.
Tomcat Installation

Download from Apache official website, such as Apache Tomcat® - Apache Tomcat 9 Software Downloads.

Then unzip the Tomcat installation file tar zxvf apache-tomcat-9.0.80.tar.gz.

If there is a manager web application, you can visit it in the browser in /home/finebi/apache-tomcat-9.0.80/webapps/manager.

FineBI Installation

Copy the webroot.zip file and paste it to the directory %Tomcat%/webapps/, then unzip it. After that, delete the copied webroot.zip file.

Startup

It is recommended that you start Tomcat in the %Tomcat%/bin directory.

Run the nohup command in the background to ensure that the process does not shut down when the ssh session is closed. 

nohup ./startup.sh &

It takes some time to get started, but usually not too long.

Login & Check

Easy Inspection

Once the startup is complete, you can do a simple check to check that it started correctly.

You can access FineBI directly on the Linux system server using the curl command. 

curl http://localhost:8080/webroot/decision/login 

The command will return FineBI's login page information, and if it returns a string of HTML information, you can assume that the deployment was successful.

If it is a Windows system server, it can be accessed directly on the server using a browser. 

Inspection After Login

Before logging, at least open the HTTP port in the server firewall, such as 8080. Otherwise, a network connection failure may occur when you visit the browser.

If possible, open the WebSocket port 48888. This step is not necessary for the check phase. Whether a WebSocket port is open or not only affects the synchronization of login information and message notifications, and does not affect the normal access.

For the first login, set the super administrator account and password, and you do not need to configure the FineDB database. After confirming that there is no problem, enter the FineBI system for configuration. 

Check the following items after you successfully log in to the FineBI system.

• Are all modules displayed normally?

• Does the Demo dashboard preview work?