Whether you ordered an Axcient BDR appliance or decided to use your own hardware, the next step is to configure the appliance for use. These steps will differ depending on which appliance option you selected.

BYOD appliance hardware only: Pre-installation steps

If you are using your own appliance hardware, also referred to as the BYOD option, you will need to download and install the software and create a bootable flash drive. The steps below reference the Linux Live USB Creator (or LiLi) software, but you can use your preferred USB-creation software.

NOTE
These steps are only required if you selected to use your own BYOD Appliance hardware.

If you ordered an Axcient BDR appliance, you can skip these pre-installation steps.

1. Navigate to the Downloads site and download the ISO file.

2. Navigate to the Linux Live USB Creator site (or your preferred USB-creator software site) and download and install the LiLi application

.

3. When LiLi is installed, insert a USB drive into your computer.

4. In the Step 1 section of the LiLi application, click the blue Refresh button and select your USB drive from the drop-down menu.

5. In the Step 2 section, click the ISO/IMG/ZIP icon and select the ISO file previously downloaded from the Downloads site. When the ISO is verified, you might notice an error message. You can safely ignore this message.

6. In the Step 4 section, select the Format the Key checkbox.

7. In the Step 5 section, click the lightningicon to create the bootable flash drive.

BYOD appliance hardware only: Install the software

When you have a bootable flash drive, you can begin installing the software.

NOTE: These steps are only required if you selected to use your own BYOD appliance hardware.

If you ordered an Axcient BDR appliance, you can skip these installation steps.

1. Insert your USB drive into the BDR appliance and power on the appliance.

2. When booting the OS, a message displays, prompting you to select an installation type.

3. If you are setting up an Axcient-branded Nano device, select Nano. Otherwise, select Standard Installation.

4. When the installation process is complete, you can remove your USB flash drive and click the Restart Now button to restart your machine.

Configure your device as an appliance

When your appliance has the operating system software installed, you can begin the provisioning and configuration process. The appliance must have Internet access to complete this process.

1. Power on the appliance.

2. Record the IP address listed on the screen. If you do not see an IP address, wait a few minutes and them press the Enter key on your keyboard to refresh the screen.

3. When you have recorded the correct IP address, open a browser on a different machine within the same network. Make sure your appliance is turned on, because you will not be able to access this location when the appliance is turned off.

4. Click the Proceed button to continue.

5. In the Setup Wizard, read the End User License Agreement (EULA) and select the I Accept the terms in the license agreement radio button.

6. Click the I Agree button to continue.

7. In the next screen, click the First machine in Cluster radio button.

8. Click the Next button to continue.

9. In the next screen, configure each appliance password, including:

1. The Linux RootUser password, which is the operating system super-user; this user requires a highly secure password,
2. The User password, which is a limited access shell account, and
3. The Admin (Web GUI) password, which is used to access the Web Interface and all features

10. Click the Next button to continue.

11. In the next screen, select the Appliance option to indicate this machine will serve as the appliance.

12. Click the Next button.

13. In the next screen, enter your reseller username and password and then click the Get Customers button. The screen expands, prompting you to select the Customer and Location where this appliance will be deployed.

14. In the Customer Username drop-down menu, select the appropriate Customer Username.

15. In the Customer Location drop-down menu, select the appropriate Location. If the drop-down menu does not display a list of customers and locations, then you do not have customers with unused locations configured within the License Portal.

16. Click the Next button when you are finished.

17. In the next screen, use the Select Time Zone drop-down menu to select the time zone for the selected Location.

18. Click the Setup button when you are finished. The appliance will complete the configuration process and reboot.

Logging into the appliance UI

When the appliance is configured and ready to be used, you will be able to access the appliance Web interface from any browser in the network. If you ordered a preconfigured Axcient BDR appliance, you will be able to access the appliance Web interface as soon as you turn on your appliance. You will need to use the password you defined during the ordering process.

1. With the appliance turned on, type the IP address of your appliance into the address bar.

2. When prompted, type your Username (admin) and your Password and then click the Login button.

3. In the Appliance Web interface, you can now manage settings and add a Storage Pool.

Auto-enable Remote Assist

When you first log in, a pop-up window displays, prompting you to configure the Auto-Enable Remote Assist feature. We highly recommend selecting Yes.

When you enable this feature, Remote Assist is automatically enabled for 7 days following an upgrade of the software. Remote Assist allows Axcient Support to access your BDR devices without your intervention in order to perform troubleshooting tasks. Axcient monitors all BDR devices through Telemetry and attempts to proactively correct issues that might occur during updates.

Add a Storage Pool

Unless you ordered a preconfigured BDR appliance, you will be prompted to create the Storage Pool when you first log in to the device.

1. In the left-hand navigation menu, click Manage Storage.

2. In the Storage Pool page, click to expand the Storage Pool heading and then click to expand the Unused Disk(s) heading.

3. Select the following settings:

1. RAID level
2. Compression level
3. Disks
   

4. Click the Create Storage button when you are finished.

Best practice: Storage Pool settings 

When setting up the Storage Pool, you will need to consider RAID level, compression level, and disk selection.

RAID level

Consider the following best practices when setting up RAID level for the Storage Pool:

	RAID-0 should never be used for production, as this option provides no redundancy. The loss of any disk in the Storage Pool will corrupt its data integrity. For RAID-1, RAID-5 and RAID-6, one or more disks are reserved to store parity or redundancy information.
	RAID-1 requires a minimum of 2 disks. All disks in a RAID-1 set are mirror copies of the data, and the total usable data size is equivalent to the size of 1 disk. Note that it is possible to allocate more than 2 disks in a RAID-1 set, but not common practice. A maximum of 1 disk can be lost within a RAID-1 set without losing Storage Pool data integrity.
	RAID-5 requires a minimum of 3 disks. In RAID-5, data is written across each disk in the set sequentially, with every 4th block being parity data. This distributes the data and parity information evenly across all disks in the set. The total usable space with RAID-5 is the total of all disks in the set, minus 1 disk of parity. For example, 3 disks that are each 2TB in RAID-5 yields 4TB. A maximum of 1 disk can be lost within a RAID-5 set without losing Storage Pool data integrity.
	RAID-6 requires a minimum of 4 disks. In RAID-6, data is written across each disk in the set sequentially and parity data is stored using an advanced data guarding algorithm. This distributes the data and parity information evenly across all disks in the set. The total usable space with RAID-6 is the total of all disks in the set, minus 2 disks of parity. For example, 4 disks that are each 2TB in RAID-6 yields 4TB. A maximum of 2 disks can be lost within a RAID-6 set without losing Storage Pool data integrity.

Compression level

Consider the following best practices when setting up Compression Level for the Storage Pool:

	LZ4 mode is recommended for all devices. LZ mode has slightly lower compression but higher performance.
	GZIP-4 mode has higher compression at the expense of lower performance.

Unused disks

Consider the following best practices when selecting disks for the Storage Pool: 

• We recommend never selecting more than 10 disks in a single RAID set.
• The more total disks you have within your storage pool, the better the overall disk performance will be.
• Adding many disks to a single RAID set increases the risk of data loss, as you can only lose 1 (RAID-5) or 2 (RAID-6) disks in the set before losing data integrity.
• Spanning together multiple smaller RAID sets increase performance with less risk, as there are more total parity drives, and you are less likely to lose data integrity.