Requirements and compatibility

Lyftron operates as a Windows Service and is entirely self-hosted, therefore no additional Windows components are required, besides explicitly stated dependencies below.

Recommendations

Lyftron makes the following recommendations for Lyftron Server deployments:

  • A dedicated machine to simplify tuning, management, and diagnostics
  • Windows Active Directory
  • Multi-core server hardware with two or more cores for production deployments

The disk I/O performance of any modern server-class system should be sufficient. Memory requirements are highly dependent on the product target usage, but 8 GB of RAM is sufficient for most deployments that do not heavy utilize built-in Apache Spark. For small deployments, 4 GB of RAM is sufficient and should be considered a minimum, unless the specific deployment is tested and verified to require less memory.

Supported database management systems for caching

Lyftron supports multiple database platform to cache and process materialized data:

Deployment of each of the platforms is project specific. Please follow the recommendations and practices documented by respective vendors.

NOTE: regarding Spark 2.1.1 - there's a known bug that causes this version to fail during startup. Please contact us if you are using this version of Spark.

Server operating systems

  • Windows Server 2016
  • Windows Server 2012 R2 (Essentials, Standard, Datacenter)
  • Windows Server 2012 (Essentials, Standard, Datacenter)
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 (minimum SP1) (Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter)

Server core Windows Server installations are not supported.

Lyftron Server can be installed on a 64-bit Windows operating system. We recommend using a server OS unless your Lyftron instance is for evaluation or personal use.

Client operating systems

  • Windows 10 x64 (Professional, Enterprise)
  • Windows 8.1 x64 (Professional, Enterprise)
  • Windows 7 x64 (minimum SP1) (Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate)

Required platforms and components

.Net Framework 4.5.2 or later

Note that only Windows 10 client operating system has .Net 4.5.x build-in. All other systems require .Net 4.5.x from Windows Update or from an offline installer, that can be found under .Net 4.5.2 offline installer.

.Net Framework 4.6 or later is recommended

Oracle JRE x64 v8 or higher (optional)

If compatible JRE is found at the time of installation it will be automatically used. In other cases, a build-in Zulu JRE 1.8 will be installed and used as Java runtime.

Virtualization

Lyftron supports the virtualization of Lyftron Server in supported virtualization environments: Microsoft Hyper-V or VMWare. Other platforms were not tested with Lyftron but every virtualizer that is certified to work with supported version of Windows should work fine.

SQL Server

Two databases are required: Lyftron Metadata Database and Apache Spark MetaStore Database, each hosted on supported Microsoft SQL Server instance specified during installation.

The following versions of SQL Server are supported for Lyftron MetaBase and Apache Spark MetaStore:

  • SQL Server 2016
  • SQL Server 2014
  • SQL Server 2012 (minimum SP1)

Your limits on database read operations

Lyftron does not support any read operations against the Lyftron or Apache Spark databases that originate from queries, scripts, .dll files, and so on, not provided by Lyftron or its support teams. If Lyftron Support determines that those read operations prevent them from solving your problem, the entire database will be unsupported. To return the database to a supported state, all unsupported read operations must stop.

SQL Server editions

Lyftron supports Express, Standard, and Enterprise editions of SQL Server or SQL Azure v11 or later. The Express edition is only recommended for evaluation purposes, personal use, or for small teams. We recommend SQL Server Standard, Enterprise or SQL Azure v11 or later for all other scenarios.

Active Directory

You can install Lyftron on a single server that is joined to an Active Directory domain or that is a member of a workgroup.

Active Directory environment is not required by Lyftron but is fully supported and recommended for enterprise deployments.

Accounts

You may use different accounts to install and run Lyftron Server:

  • NetworkService
  • LocalService
  • Dedicated local account
  • Dedicated domain account

Best practices for accounts:

  • use Network Service or a dedicated domain account, because they present network credentials, allowing Lyftron to transparently authenticate against data sources that support Windows Integrated Authentication
  • use accounts that have permissions to authenticate users against a domain, because it allows Lyftron to authenticate incoming users by Windows Integrated Authentication

Service account

Lyftron Server requires a service account. That service account becomes the identity for the installed Windows Service handling requests to Lyftron.

During installation, you have to specify a user account. The Log on as a service permission will be granted by installer automatically. You must not use the account that you use to install Lyftron. For example, if you are logged in as domain\user1 when you install Lyftron, do not use domain\user1 as the account for Lyftron.

Warning: Service account should not be a member of Local Administrators group on Windows. In such case, required permissions will be granted to Administrators group, not the account itself. If at a later time, such account administrators group membership is revoked, you will have to manually grant necessary permissions or reinstall Lyftron.

Installer grants Log on as a service permission to selected account only during installation.

It is not recommended to manually change service account after installation. Please reinstall Lyftron Server if you need to change the service user account.

If reinstallation of Lyftron Server is not desired or possible, and manual change of service account after installation is absolutely necessary, you must ensure that:

  • the Log on as a service permission is granted to the new service user,
  • the read and write permissions to Apache Spark warehouse directory are granted to the new service user,
  • necessary permissions to access Lyftron metabase and Spark metabase deployed on SQL Server are granted to the new service user,
  • necessary permissions to access data sources are granted to the new service user,
  • necessary http.sys port reservations are available to the new service user.

Hardware recommendations

Lyftron can scale from a basic installation on a laptop used by a single person all the way up to a highly available deployment used by thousands of people. The following recommendations should apply to most Lyftron deployments, but your requirements may vary depending on the usage of your team. For example, if you have particularly large data set that you want to materialize using built-in Apache Spark, you may need higher specification machines than what is listed below. Note that all of the machines discussed below could be either physical or virtual.

A single machine, with one dual-core processor, 8 GB of RAM, and a fast hard disk drive. Scaling server up can enable it to handle a larger number of users and workload.

For evaluation or personal use, you can use a basic configuration with as little as 4 GB of RAM, but clearly, this would not be recommended for a production server used by more than one person.

Natural Languages

You can install Lyftron on supported operating systems in various languages. However, Lyftron user interface is available only in US English.

Browsers

You can use these browsers with Lyftron to access it with the web client.

Browser Supported Version Known issues
Chrome most recent (recommended)
Firefox most recent
Edge most recent
Internet Explorer 11 and later May not render Apache Spark application portal properly. For example, query plans will not show up

Edge, Firefox, and Chrome automatically update themselves, so Lyftron supports the most recent version.

Third-Party Software

Lyftron software may be provided with certain third-party software, including but not limited to open-source software, which is licensed under its applicable third-party software license agreement. For license information about third-party software distributed with Lyftron software, refer to your Lyftron license agreement.