Operating System

The Terminology Server is recommended to be installed on x86_64 / amd64 Linux operating systems where Docker Engine is available. See the list of supported architectures by Docker.

Here is the list of distributions that we suggest in the order of recommendation:

• Ubuntu LTS releases

• Debian LTS releases

• CentOS 7 (deprecated)

It is possible to install the server release package on other distributions but bear in mind that there might be limitations.

Software packages

Before starting the production deployment of the Terminology Server make sure that the following packages are installed and configured properly:

• Docker Engine

• docker compose

• ability to execute bash scripts

Firewall

In case a reverse proxy is used, the Terminology Server requires two ports to be opened either towards the intranet or the internet (depending on usage):

• http: port 80

• https: port 443

In case there is no reverse proxy installed, the following port must be opened to be able to access the server's REST API:

• http: port 8080

Snow Owl with a co-located Elasticsearch cluster

For installations where Snow Owl and Elasticsearch are co-located, we recommend the following hardware specifications:

Snow Owl with a managed Elasticsearch cluster

For installations where Snow Owl connects to a managed Elasticsearch cluster at elastic.co we recommend the following hardware specifications:

Cloud VMs

Here are a few examples of which Virtual Machine types could be used for hosting the Terminology Server at the three most popular Cloud providers (including but not limited to):

The technology stack behind the Terminology Server consists of the following components:

• The Terminology Server application

• Elasticsearch as the data layer

• Optional: Authentication/Authorization service

  • Either an OpenID Connect/OAuth2.0 compatible external service with JSON Web Token support

  • Or an LDAP-compliant directory service

• Optional: A reverse proxy handling the requests towards the REST API

Terminology Server

Outgoing communication from the Terminology Server goes via:

• HTTP(s) towards Elasticsearch and to the external OpenID Connect/OAuth2 authorization server

• LDAP(s) towards the A&A service

Incoming communication is handled through the HTTP port 8080.

A selected reverse proxy channels all incoming traffic through to the Terminology Server.

Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch versions supported by each major version of Snow Owl:

The Elasticsearch cluster can either be:

• a co-located, single-node, self-hosted cluster

A&A service

Reverse proxy

With a preconfigured domain name and DNS record, the default installation package can take care of requesting and maintaining the necessary certificates for secure HTTP. See the details of this in the Configuration section.