Installation Guide
Version 3.0.0
MDS 05-6138A01
Table of Contents
Planning Your Installation 4
System Requirements 4
Monitoring up to 25 Devices 4
Monitoring 25 to 500 Devices 4
Web Browser and Web Client Support 4
Operating System (OS) Support 5
TCP/UDP Ports Required 5
Device Support 6
Network Requirements 7
Installing PulseNET 8
Initial Considerations 8
Installing PulseNET on Windows 8
Step 1: Running the Installer 9
Step 2: Introduction 9
Step 3: Transaction Product Agreement 9
Step 4: Installation Type 9
Step 5: Install Folder 10
Step 6: Shortcut Location 10
Step 7: PulseNET Service 11
Step 8: Pre-Installation Summary 11
Step 9: PulseNET Installation 12
Step 10: Secure Server Settings 12
Step 11: PulseNET Ports Configuration 13
Step 12: PulseNET Server Startup 13
Step 13: Software Installation Finish 14
Step 14: Software Configuration 14
Step 15: Verification 14
Manually Installing PulseNET as a Windows Service 15
Installing PulseNET on Linux 15
Step 1: Running the Linux Installer 16
Steps 2 through 9: 16
Steps 10 through 13: 17
Step 13a: Configure Agent Manager Privileges for Linux 17
Step 13b: Configure PulseNET to Auto-Start at Boot Time 18
Step 14: Software Configuration 19
Step 15: Verification 19
Importing a Network Security Certificate 19
Uninstalling PulseNET 20
Quick Reference Chart for Windows Installation 23
Quick Reference Chart for Linux Installation 24
Upgrading PulseNET 25
Preparing to Upgrade 25
Upgrading PulseNET with Installer 25
Upgrading PulseNET from Archive File 28
Quick Reference Chart for Windows Upgrade 29
Quick Reference Chart for Linux Upgrade 30
Running PulseNET 31
Starting PulseNET 31
Stopping PulseNET 32
Logging in to PulseNET 33
Planning Your Installation 1
System Requirements
Before installing PulseNET, ensure that your system meets the following hardware and soft-
ware requirements.
Monitoring up to 25 Devices
CPU Dual Core CPU at 1.6 GHz
This table shows the minimum system require-
Memory 4 GB of available RAM
ments for PulseNET to monitor up to 25 devices.
Disk Space 30 GB of available storage
NOTE PulseNET support for 32-bit operating systems will be retired at the end
of 2014. A migration procedure will be provided to assist customers with moving
from existing 32-bit systems to new 64-bit systems.
Device Support
PulseNET can monitor the following devices:
Initial Considerations
PulseNET should run on a dedicated machine because it will process and store large
volumes of data. Before beginning your installation, verify that you have full admin-
istrator access to your servers operating system. From a network perspective, ensure
that the machines host name can be resolved and that reverse lookup also correctly
identifies your server.
The following stages are involved in installing and configuring PulseNET:
Stage 1: Install the PulseNET application
Stage 2: Configure the PulseNET server
Stage 3: Start the PulseNET server and log in
After the installation completes, you will probably want to change the default PulseNET
administrator account password. The default user name and password (admin/admin)
will initially be used to log in to the browser interface and use PulseNET command-line
tools with administrator privileges. It is strongly recommended that you change the
default password for this account after installation.
Step 2: Introduction
The Introduction screen provides an overview of the installation steps. Each installation
screen includes a Previous button so you can go back and adjust the specified informa-
tion as needed. Click Next after reading the contents of the Introduction screen.
Read the Transaction Product Agreement statement and Accept the terms of the agree-
ment. If you decline, the PulseNET installer will close. Click Next.
If you chose Standard Install, skip to Step 12. In Standard mode the installer will show
the installation progress and then advance directly to this step.
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Installing PulseNET
10
Step 5: Install Folder
1 Custom Install Only: Choose the location where you want to install PulseNET. You can
accept the default location or click Browse to navigate to another location.
If you have a previous version of PulseNET installed and you choose its install folder, you
are prompted to indicate whether you want to upgrade that version or install a new
version without upgrading. See Upgrading PulseNET.
2 Click Next.
2 Click Next.
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Installing PulseNET
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Step 7: PulseNET Service
NOTE If you do not see this option, you may not have run the installer as an ad-
ministrator, as described in Step 1. If that is the case, abort the install and restart.
1 Custom Install Only: To run PulseNET as a Windows service (highly recommended), select
Enable PulseNET as a Service. (Be aware that this is not an option if you are installing
on Linux. You can manually set PulseNET to run at boot time after installing.)
2 Click Next once. There will be a pause while PulseNET builds the installation summary.
3 When you are satisfied with the parameters of your installation, click Install.
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Installing PulseNET
12
Step 9: PulseNET Installation
NOTE To set up the system to use HTTPS, you must also generate a key pair
(security certificate) in the PulseNET keystore. For information about how to do
this, see Importing a Network Security Certificate.
2 Click Next.
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Installing PulseNET
13
Step 11: PulseNET Ports Configuration
The PulseNET Ports Configuration screen displays default ports that you can assign.
1 If you want to apply the default values, click Next. Otherwise, configure the desired
server port numbers. If you have changed any of the values and want to revert back to
the defaults, click Defaults.
2 Click Next.
NOTE If there are port assignment conflicts, an error message dialog appears.
Click Review Ports to return to the PulseNET Ports Configuration screen and
resolve the conflicting ports, or choose Ignore, then Continue to continue with the
installation without resolving the port conflicts.
If you enabled PulseNET to run as a Windows service in Step 7, this screen will not ap-
pear. Skip ahead to Step 13.
If you did not enable PulseNET to run as a Windows service, the PulseNET Server Startup
step provides you with the option to start PulseNET from the installer.
If you want the installer to start a one-time instance of PulseNET immediately, leave the
Run Now check box selected. If you do not want the installer to auto-start PulseNET
(for example, if you want to manually set up PulseNET to run as a service), deselect the
Run Now check box. Click Next.
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Installing PulseNET
14
Step 13: Software Installation Finish
Click Done to close the installer and move on to the software configuration stage. Al-
though the installer has been closed, full installation has not yet been completed, be-
cause software configuration must now occur.
If you enabled PulseNET to run as a service (Step 7) or selected Run Now (Step 12),
PulseNET will start in the background.
The software configuration process will continue in the background for up to thirty min-
utes. Proceed to Step 15 to verify that PulseNET has started and is continuing its internal
configuration tasks.
NOTE During the initial startup, a command prompt window may open. Do
not close the command window. It will close automatically when PulseNET is
stopped. This is most likely to occur on Windows 7 or 2008 R2.
If you did not select Run Now in Step 12, start the PulseNET service (see Starting
PulseNET). Wait for the software configuration process described in Step 14 to finish
(this could take up to thirty minutes), then continue with the verification.
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Installing PulseNET
15
To verify that the PulseNET service is running:
1 Open the Windows Task Manager.
2 Click the Show processes from all users button at the lower left.
3 Verify that the following processes are running:
fms.exe the Foglight main
launcher (this will appear al-
most immediately)
mysqld.exe the MySQL
database engine (this will vary
based on the chosen database)
fglam.exe the Foglight
embedded agent manager (this may take several minutes to appear)
NOTE Until these main processes are running, you will not be able to log in to
the PulseNET interface. Even after login is enabled, initial configuration will con-
tinue behind the scenes, so leave PulseNET running in order to avoid issues that
result from an incomplete installation.
If you selected a Standard install, or if you chose not to have PulseNET installed to run
as a service, you can subsequently install PulseNET as a Windows service either from the
Start menu or from the command line.
To install the PulseNET service from the Start menu:
Navigate to Start > Programs > GE MDS > PulseNET 3.0 > Windows Service > Install
Service For PulseNET.
Be aware that on headless machines or servers without a GUI, the PulseNET installer will
determine that Console Mode should be used, and a text-based install program will
be displayed.
Steps 2 through 9:
Follow the installation steps given previously for a Windows install. The displays pro-
vided by the PulseNET install for Linux correspond to the ones shown for Windows. If
you selected a Standard Install, do Steps 2 through 4 and then go to the next section,
Steps 10 through 15. If you selected a Custom Install, do Steps 2 through 9, skipping
step 7 in the list of Windows steps.
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Installing PulseNET
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Steps 10 through 13:
Standard Install: You should see the display in Step 13 where you can click the Done
button to exit the installer.
Custom Install: Follow Steps 10 through 13, skipping Step 12 shown for a Windows in-
stall. Click the Done button in Step 13 to exit the installer.
On Linux systems, certain agents require elevated system privileges in order to gather
metrics. This is achieved by configuring the Agent Manager to launch agents with root
privileges. You will be using an external application like sudo or setuid_launcher to give
the agents the required access. Follow the steps below before you start PulseNET on a
Linux server.
To use setuid_launcher to configure the agents:
1 On the server where the Agent Manager is installed, open a terminal window and navi-
gate to <pulsenet_home>/fglam/state/default/config/.
2 Open the fglam.config.xml file in a text editor.
3 Edit the <path> element under <secure-launcher> to point to your local se-
tuid_launcher executable. This executable is typically located in <pulsenet_home>/
fglam/bin/setuid_launcher.
4 Become the root user and use the chown root setuid_launcher command to
change the ownership to root.
5 Use the chmod u+s setuid_launcher command to set the sticky bit on this pro-
gram. This permits agents that need root privileges to be run as the root user without
requiring the administrator password.
On the server where PulseNET is installed, become the root user and open a terminal
window.
1 Navigate to <pulsenet_home>/scripts/init.d/ and move into the subdirec-
tory for your specific operating system family.
For example: cd RedHat
2 Copy the pulsenet file into the directory on your
server where startup scripts are stored.
For example: cp pulsenet /etc/init.d/
3 Edit the sample pulsenet file to include paths and
commands that are specific to your version of Li-
nux.
4 Using the appropriate commands on your version
of Linux, configure the pulsenet script to run at sys-
tem boot time.
For example: chkconfig pulsenet on (RedHat)
5 Again using the appropriate commands on your
version of Linux, run the pulsenet script to start the
PulseNET service on your system.
For example: service pulsenet start (Red-
Hat)
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Installing PulseNET
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Step 14: Software Configuration
After the PulseNET service has been started, the software configuration process will
continue in the background for up to thirty minutes. Proceed to Step 15 to verify that
PulseNET has started and is continuing its internal configuration tasks.
At this point you should see the PulseNET processes begin to run as the system auto-
matically continues its final steps to configure PulseNET internally. This may take up to
thirty minutes to complete, after which you will be able to verify that PulseNET is ready
for use by checking the system process table for all of the required processes.
Uninstalling PulseNET
As with most commercial software, PulseNET has an uninstall pro-
gram that can be used to remove the software. There are still a few
steps that must be accomplished outside of this uninstall program in
order to completely remove PulseNET from the machine. The simple
process listed below can be used to uninstall PulseNET manually.
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Installing PulseNET
21
To uninstall PulseNET for Windows:
1 Stop the PulseNET service using the appropriate method for your server.
To stop a standalone server running PulseNET as a Windows service, nav-
igate to the Services menu, click on PulseNET, and click Stop the service.
Keep this window open to later verify that the service was successfully
stopped.
To stop a standalone server not running as a Windows service, see Stop-
ping PulseNET.
2 To delete the service file, navigate to the Start Menu and locate the Command Prompt
window. Right-click and choose the option to Run as administrator.
Then type one of the following
commands:
sc delete <ser-
vice name>
<pulsenet_home>\
bin\fms -r
The default service name is
PulseNET.
3 To delete the program, nav-
igate to the GE_MDS folder,
right-click, and choose De-
lete. Because of the size of the
GE_MDS folder, you may want
to shift-delete to get rid of it
permanently instead of simply
sending it to the recycle bin.
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Installing PulseNET
22
4 To delete the shortcuts, open the Start Menu and locate the GE_MDS folder there. Right-
click and choose Delete. Shortcuts installed on the desktop may need to be deleted
manually.
5 Return to the Services window used in Step 1 above and refresh the list. PulseNET
should disappear from the list of current services, verifying that it has been deleted.
6 Occasionally, a PulseNET installation log will be placed outside of the GE_MDS folder.
Check the parent directory (for example, C:) and delete this log file if it exists.
Apply License P P
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Installing PulseNET
24
Quick Reference Chart for Linux Installation
Apply License P P
Upgrading PulseNET 3
Preparing to Upgrade
Before upgrading PulseNET, complete the following steps:
1 Review the list of installation considerations given in Planning Your Installation.
2 Stop the running instance(s) of PulseNET (see Stopping PulseNET), but leave any exter-
nal databases running.
3 Insure that your PulseNET machine has enough disc space to store both the old and
new versions of PulseNET.
4 Create a backup of the previous version.
For PulseNET installs running an embedded database, copy the GE_MDS
folder to GE_MDS_<time stamp>.
For PulseNET installs running an external database, have your database
administrator create a back up of the external database. Then copy the
GE_MDS folder to GE_MDS_<time stamp>.
5 Be aware that new license-checking features in PulseNET will require you to obtain a
new license key after the upgrade. Directions for this are given in Step 12 below.
If you experience unusual or unexpected browser interface behavior (for example, un-
usual page layout) after upgrading, try logging out of PulseNET, clearing the browsers
cache, restarting the browser, and then logging back in to PulseNET. In most cases, this
will correct the problem. In rare cases, proxies and firewalls inappropriately cache JavaS-
cript, and therefore you may need to clear their caches as well.
After upgrading, the embedded Agent Manager should start automatically by default.
However, if the Agent Manager does not start automatically, you can edit the server.
config file to match the following example: server.fglam.embedded = true
Starting PulseNET
Windows: Choose one of the methods listed below.
If PulseNET is installed to run as a service, go to the Services application, select PulseNET
from the list, and click Start Service.
If you installed the startup icon in the default location (Windows),
navigate to Start > Programs > GE MDS > PulseNET 3.0 > Start
PulseNET.
Double-click the Start PulseNET shortcut on the desktop.
Open a command window and navigate to the directory <pulsenet_home>\bin
and execute the following command: fms.exe -s
When PulseNET starts successfully, the following message appears in the command
window: PulseNET startup completed.
Additional fms commands:
Stopping PulseNET
Windows: Choose one of the methods listed below.
If PulseNET is running as a service, go to the Services application, select PulseNET from
the list, and click Stop Service.
If you installed the startup icon in the default location (Windows), navigate to Start >
Programs > GE MDS > PulseNET 3.0 > Stop PulseNET.
Double-click the Stop PulseNET icon on the desktop.
Type Ctrl-C on the command window in which PulseNET started.
Navigate to the directory <pulsenet_home>\bin and execute the following com-
mand: fms -q
After you log in to PulseNET, refer to the Administration Guide to complete additional
PulseNET configuration steps and licensing.
Index
A
Agent Manager
Configuring for Linux 17
I
Installation
Considerations 8
For Linux 15
For Windows 8
L
Logging in to PulseNET 33
N
Network Security Certificates 19
S
Starting PulseNET
For Linux 32
For Windows 31
Stopping PulseNET
For Linux 32
For Windows 32
Supported
Databases 5
Devices 6
Operating Systems 4
TCP/UDP Ports 5
Web Browsers 6
System Requirements 4
U
Uninstalling 20
For Linux 22
For Windows 21
Upgrading
Preparation 25
With Archive File 28
With Installer 25
W
Windows Service, manual installation 15
Quest Copyright Notice Patents
2014 Quest Software, Inc. This product is protected by U.S. Patents #7,979,245 and
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. #8,175,862. Additional patents pending.
Quest Software World Headquarters The majority of GE MDS radios deployed since 1985 are still
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Thanks to our durable products and comprehensive solu-
Refer to our web site for regional and international office tions, GE MDS is the wireless leader in industrial automa-
information. tionincluding oil and gas production and transportation,
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electric transmission and distribution, and many other util- In case of difficulty...
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online transaction processing. Now is an exciting time for to the MDS PulseNET application, please contact GE MDS
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As your wireless needs change, you can continue to ex- Phone: 585-241-5510
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more information. Website: www.gemds.com