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Installing and maintaining Iguana is a simple process, especially if you: 

  1. Reviewed the System Requirements to prepare an environment to support your Iguana implementation.

  2. Understand Iguana’s Key Components and deployment best practices to optimize Iguana’s performance and future maintenance. 

  3. Follow our Installation Proceduresaccording to the operating system.

System Requirements
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System-Requirements
System-Requirements

With no third-party dependencies and a light footprint, Iguana can be deployed in various environments on modest hardware. Deploy Iguana in the cloud (e.g. Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure) or on-premise on a physical or virtual machine.

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Component

Requirement

Computer/Processor 

4 core Intel Xeon or equivalent processor

Memory

4GB or more recommended

Hard Disk

Dependent on expected message volume and configured log retention period.

Operating System

Windows

Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016

Linux

Any Ubuntu versions still supported by Canonical, or RedHat/CentOS 7+

MacOS

Mac OS X (Mavericks or newer)

Note: 64-bit Linux, macOS, and Windows are supported. 32-bit Ubuntu and Windows are also supported.

Web Browser 

Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome. For best performance we recommend using a modern, standards compliant web browser like Google Chrome or Firefox.

 

Iguana’s Key Components
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Iguanas-Key-Components
Iguanas-Key-Components
 

View this article: Iguana Key Components   

Installation Procedures 
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Installation-Procedures
Installation-Procedures

Now that you understand Iguana’s key components and deployment best practices, depending on your objective, you can choose to follow the Windows or Linux/MacOS Install procedures using either one of Iguana’s installation methods: Quick or Manual installation. 

Method

Recommended Use 

Considerations

Quick Install

For a trial evaluation or development environment.

  • Installation Wizard is easy to use.

  • Upgrade process may differ from manual installs.

  • Not recommended when another running Iguana instance exists on the server.

Manual Install 

For staging and production environments or when you need multiple Iguana instances on one server.

  • Installation via command line or terminal.

  • Can follow deployment best practices, which ease the upgrade and rollback processes and optimizes Iguana performance and security.

 

Windows Install

Video Tutorial:

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Linux or MacOS Install 

Video Tutorial:

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Note: For instructions on how to configure the Iguana logs, please refer to Log Configuration and Performance below.

Configuring Iguana 

Log Configuration and Performance 

Log Configuration Tips: 

  • Log Directory: Configure a separate folder for logs on a designated partition or drive. Ensure this drive has good read/write speeds for low latency. 

  • Maximum Log Age: Logs older than this will be deleted by the daily log purge. The default value is 60 days, however, your ideal purge time may depend on your log sizes and your requirements around how long you need to keep messages for troubleshooting. 

  • Log Purge Time: Logs are purged daily at this time, if they are older than the Maximum Log Age. We recommend that logs are purged when the server load is the lowest.

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7. Restart the Iguana service and log back into Iguana.

Log Maintenance and Performance

  • Backup logs regularly. Back up only the dated log files. Files in the index and meta folders should not be backed up. They get recreated every time Iguana re-starts.

  • Monitor storage space. One of the most common causes of downtime is when Iguana cannot write to the storage medium because it is out of space.

  • Avoid locking up log index files. Backup and antivirus processes can block Iguana’s access to the logs/index folder, causing Iguana to shut down. Exclude this folder from these processes.

  • Ease of future upgrades and maintenance. Separate log directory enables you to avoid having to move the logs during an upgrade.  

  • Enhance log security. Add additional layers of security on your log directly by implementing OS level security restrictions.

Users and Roles 

Iguana uses a Role Based permission system which allows enterprises to control user access to different features and actions. In Iguana Settings > Users, Administrators can create and manage Users and Roles, defining what channels and activities a user has access to. 

If you are using more than one Iguana instance, and they are the same Iguana version, you can sync users and roles to remote Iguana instances for easier maintenance.

Email & SMS Notifications

Iguana’s alerting system supports two types of notifications to send to user’s email or SMS addresses. You can configure rules for these notifications in Iguana Settings > Monitoring.

  • Channel inactivity rules. These types of alerts will let you know if Iguana has failed to receive messages during a period of time that you can define.

  • Standard rules. These alert rules are defined by a matching condition (any keyword, phrase, or regex pattern) in the Logs using Iguana’s standard log messages or custom log messages from your interfaces. 

External Repositories 

Iguana uses an internal source control repository built upon Git to store all versions of your interfaces in your working directory. In order to import and export channels, external repositories (local or cloud repositories such as Github or Bitbucket) can be configured in Iguana. External repositories can be leveraged to:

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