Virtana Platform deployment prerequisites

An OVA (Open Virtual Appliance) is a pre-packaged virtual machine file used to deploy software in virtualized environments like VMware ESXi. The Virtana Global View application is distributed as an OVA file, such as virtana-k8s-xxxx.ova, allowing you to deploy the entire platform as a ready-to-use virtual appliance.

The configuration below is bundled with the OVA. No manual modification is needed unless your environment requires customization.

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the standard Internet protocol used for sending emails between servers. SMTP configuration is mandatory for Global View deployment. The deployment validation will fail if valid SMTP details are not provided. SMTP configuration is mandatory for Global View deployment to enable email-based functionality, including user onboarding invitations, forgot password/password reset emails, and alert and notification emails.

Gather the following details from your existing SMTP server before beginning deployment:

These values must be provided during Global View deployment in the input.env file. The deployment process validates the SMTP configuration to help prevent application setup failures caused by incorrect SMTP settings.

DNS (Domain Name System) records are entries in a DNS server that map human-readable domain names (like globalview.example.com) to machine-readable IP addresses (like 192.168.1.10) or other domain names. DNS records are required for deployment because the platform exposes multiple web-accessible services that must each be reachable through a dedicated hostname.

Create the following DNS records, all pointing to the VM's IP address:

The OVA files are available on demand. Contact Virtana Support if you'd like to try it out.

Files to download:

After downloading, verify the integrity of the OVA locally.

Run the command in your local environment.

sha256sum -c virtana-k8s-xxxx.ova.sha256

Expected output:

virtana-k8s-xxxx.ova: OK

The approach depends on whether the VM has internet access and whether you have a private registry.

Before you deploy the Virtana Platform, you must register the Virtana Helm chart repository with your local Helm client and refresh its index. Registering the repository makes the Virtana Platform charts available to Helm so that you can install or upgrade the platform. You run the commands in this topic from a terminal on the host where you manage the deployment.

This topic covers the prerequisites, the command to add the repository, the command to refresh the repository index, and how to confirm that the repository is registered.

helm repo add virtana helm-repo-url --username repo-username --password repo-token

helm repo add virtana helm-repo-url --ca-file path-to-ca-certificate

Virtana Platform supports the following Kubernetes distributions and versions:

Before you deploy, make sure your cluster version is within the supported range.

Your cluster must have enough resources to run Virtana. The requirements depend on the size of your IT environment. The following table lists the minimum cluster resources required for each component.

Run kubectl get nodes and check the status to ensure all nodes are Ready and have sufficient capacity.

Your Kubernetes cluster must have following two Storage Classes with Dynamic Provisioning:

Install the Kubernetes Metrics Server to enable HPA (Horizontal Pod Autoscaling).

helm repo add metrics-server https://kubernetes-sigs.github.io/metrics-server/
helm upgrade --install metrics-server metrics-server/metrics-server

Verify that the Metrics Server is running and healthy before enabling HPA for Virtana components. Run kubectl top nodes. If you see CPU and memory usage for your nodes, the metrics server is active.

A load balancer enables external access to services deployed in your Kubernetes cluster. You need a load balancer to expose services such as the UI and API outside the cluster, and it must support the Kubernetes LoadBalancer service type. Examples include MetalLB and AWS ALB.

Make sure your load balancer is fully configured and integrated with your Kubernetes cluster.

helm upgrade --install ingress-nginx ingress-nginx \
  --repo https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx \
  --namespace ingress-nginx --create-namespace \
  --version 4.12.2 or more

kubectl create ns ingress-nginx
oc adm policy add-scc-to-user privileged -z ingress-nginx -n ingress-nginx
oc adm policy add-scc-to-user privileged -z ingress-nginx-admission -n ingress-nginx

# Get hostname
kubectl -n ingress-nginx get svc ingress-nginx-controller \
  -o=jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].hostname}'

# OR

# Get IP
kubectl -n ingress-nginx get svc ingress-nginx-controller \
  -o=jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}'         

Virtana Platform requires SMTP configuration to send emails, such as notifications and alerts. The following SMTP client details are required:

The following variables are used as references throughout the documentation and in deployment values.

Make sure these values are consistent across your configuration files and deployment scripts.

The Virtana Platform uses different licensing mechanisms depending on the component. Understand which licenses apply to your environment before you deploy.

Infrastructure Observability requires an appliance-level license file that you must obtain from Virtana Support and upload to the appliance before deployment. Global View and Container Observability are licensed through your Virtana Platform subscription. Virtana provisions these licenses at the organization level during account setup, so they don't require a license file.

For detailed information about license types and licensing mechanisms, see the License Usage Reports.

Virtana AI enhances the user experience by providing a chatbot interface that allows users to interact with documentation, query alert-related information, and generate alert policies.

To enable this functionality, an API key from a supported model provider is required during deployment.

Virtana AI supports the following model providers. Choose one of the options below based on your organization's preferred provider.