Installing Riak CS

Riak CS is supported on a variety of operating systems, including Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, Solaris, SmartOS, FreeBSD, and OS X. Riak CS is not supported on Microsoft Windows.

You can install Riak CS on a single node (for development purposes) or using an automated deployment tool. Any Riak CS installation involves three components, all of which must be installed separately:

• Riak KV — The distributed database on top of which Riak CS is built
• Riak CS itself
• Stanchion — An application used to manage globally unique entities such as users and buckets.

Riak KV and Riak CS must be installed on each node in your cluster. Stanchion, however, needs to be installed on only one node.

Version Compatibility

We strongly recommend using one of the documented version combinations when installing and running Riak CS.

Installing Riak KV

Before installing Riak CS, Riak KV must be installed on each node in your cluster. You can install Riak KV either as part of an OS-specific package or from source.

• Debian and Ubuntu
• RHEL and CentOS
• Mac OS X
• FreeBSD
• SUSE
• From Source

Riak KV is also officially supported on the following public cloud infrastructures:

• Windows Azure
• AWS Marketplace

Remember that you must repeat this installation process on each node in your cluster. For future reference, you should make note of the Riak KV installation directory.

If you want to fully configure Riak KV prior to installing Riak CS, see our documentation on configuring Riak KV for CS.

Installing Riak CS on a Node

Riak CS and Stanchion packages are available on the Download Riak CS page. Similarly, Riak packages are available on the Download Riak KV page.

After downloading Riak CS, Stanchion, and Riak, install them using your operating system’s package management commands.

Note on Riak CS and public ports

Riak CS is not designed to function directly on TCP port 80, and it should not be operated in a manner that exposes it directly to the public internet. Instead, consider a load-balancing solution such as a dedicated device HAProxy or Nginx between Riak CS and the outside world.

Installing Riak CS on Mac OS X

To install Riak CS on OS X, first download the appropriate package from the downloads page:

curl -O https://files.tiot.jp/riak/cs/2.0/2.0.0/osx/10.8/riak-cs-2.0.0-OSX-x86_64.tar.gz

Then, unpack the downloaded tarball:

tar -xvzf riak-cs-2.0.0-OSX-x86_64.tar.gz

At this point, you can move on to configuring Riak CS.

Installing Riak CS on Debian or Ubuntu

On Debian and Ubuntu, Riak CS packages are hosted on packagecloud.io. Instructions for installing via shell scripts, manual installation, Chef, and Puppet can be found in packagecloud’s installation docs.

Platform-specific pages are linked below:

• Lucid
• Precise
• Squeeze
• Trusty
• Wheezy

Installing Riak CS on RHEL or CentOS

On RHEL or CentOS, Riak CS packages are hosted on files.tiot.jp.

Platform-specific pages are linked below:

• el5
• el6
• Fedora 19

Installing Stanchion on a Node

Stanchion is an application that manages globally unique entities within a Riak CS cluster. It performs actions such as ensuring unique user accounts and bucket names across the whole system. Riak CS cannot be used without Stanchion.

All Riak CS nodes must be configured to communicate with a single Stanchion node. Although multiple Stanchion instances may be installed and running within a cluster, even one on each node, only one may be actively used by the cluster. Running multiple instances of Stanchion simultaneously can produce a variety of problems such as the inability to create user accounts and buckets or the inability to enforce their uniqueness.

Because only one Stanchion instance can be used at any given time, it’s not uncommon for a load balancer to be used to handle Stanchion failover in the event that the primary Stanchion node becomes unavailable. You can achieve this by specifying a load balancer IP as the Stanchion IP in each Riak CS node’s riak-cs.conf. This load balancer must be configured to send all requests to a single Stanchion node, failing over to a secondary Stanchion node if the primary is unavailable. More details can be found in Specifying the Stanchion Node.

Installing Stanchion on Mac OS X

First, download the appropriate package from the downloads page.

curl -O http://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.basho.com/stanchion/1.4/1.4.3/osx/10.8/stanchion-2.0.0-OSX-x86_64.tar.gz

Then, unpack the downloaded tarball:

stanchion-2.0.0-OSX-x86_64.tar.gz

At this point, you can move on to configuring Riak CS.

Installing Stanchion on Debian or Ubuntu

Stanchion files are available from files.tiot.jp.

Installing the .deb Package Manually (not recommended)

sudo dpkg -i <stanchion-package.deb>

Replace <riak-cs-package.deb> with the actual filename for the package you are installing.

At this point, you can move on to configuring Riak CS.

Installing Stanchion on RHEL or CentOS

On RHEL or CentOS, you can either use yum or install the .rpm package manually.

Installing the .rpm Package Manually (not recommended)

sudo rpm -Uvh <stanchion-package.rpm>

Replace <stanchion-package.rpm> with the actual filename for the package you are installing.

At this point, you can move on to configuring Riak CS.

Note on SELinux

CentOS enables Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) by default. If you encounter errors during installation, try disabling SELinux.

What’s Next?

Once you’ve completed installation of Riak CS and Riak, you’re ready to learn more about configuring Riak CS.