Common Server Operations¶

Server Status¶

To check the status of Helion Stackato:

$ kato status

This will list all the roles configured to run on the VM, and whether they are running, stopped, or starting.

Roles are logical groups of processes (see kato role info) which can be inspected individually with kato process ... commands.

In particular, the kato process ready command is useful for determining if the system is in a state to receive configuration commands. For example, to check that all processes for the configured roles are ready:

$ kato process ready all

Starting and Stopping Roles¶

To control the Helion Stackato roles, use kato start, stop and restart commands:

$ kato stop

Without any further options the operation applies to all Helion Stackato roles. To start, stop or restart individual roles, specify them after the desired command:

$ kato stop mysql

System Shutdown¶

To safely shut down the VM, run the shutdown command as root:

$ sudo shutdown -h now

Setting the Time Zone¶

At first boot, the time zone of the Helion Stackato VM is set to UTC. To set this to your local time zone, run the kato op set_timezone command. When run without arguments, the command will prompt for time zone selection, but the time zone can be set non-interactively with the --timezone option. For example:

$ kato op set_timezone --timezone America/Chicago

You can also run the tzselect command to find the appropriate time zone string for your location.

Check the time with the date command after setting the time zone. If it does not display the correct local time the ntpd daemon will eventually correct it, but you can force synchronization with ntpdate using the following commands:

$ sudo service ntp stop
$ sudo ntpdate -u pool.ntp.org
$ sudo service ntp start

Resetting the VM¶

If you would like to return a Helion Stackato VM to its original "out-of-the-box" configuration, use the kato node reset command. This command has two options:

kato node reset docker: Removes all docker containers, and deletes all but the Helion Stackato release images. Not meant for general use, but implicitly run along with reset factory.

Monitoring The Helion Stackato Server¶

Management Console¶

The Management Console has a Settings page that allows an administrator to monitor the server component and services, and restart or stop services as necessary.

New Relic¶

For more information, see New Relic Server Monitoring.

Creating an Administrator¶

The easiest way to add administrators to Helion Stackato is via the Management Console under Users. The Management Console will prompt to create the initial administrator the first time you use it.

If you do not have access to the Management Console, create a user by logging in to the micro cloud or core node controller via ssh or through the VM tty console (as the stackato user) and run stackato register:

$ stackato target api.stackato-xxxx.local
$ stackato register superuser@example.net

Grant administrative privileges using kato config:

$ kato config push cloud_controller_ng admins superuser@example.net

Subsequent new users can be added remotely with the stackato client by an administrator.

System Monitoring with Nagios¶

If Nagios is installed on your server nodes, you can use it to monitor and report resource utilization. See the Best Practices Guide for details.

Server Backup, Import, and Export¶

The import and export functionality can be used to do regular backups, or to move the Helion Stackato configuration from one server to another. It is also a means of upgrading the Helion Stackato VM without having to install everything from the ground up.

For more information on how to export and import your data, see Best Practices.