System Requirements for RSpace (for System Admins)

Updated 1 month ago by RSpace Support

The following information is only applicable to an on-premises Enterprise instance of RSpace. If you are considering using a SaaS version of RSpace (RSpace Team, or RSpace Enterprise hosted on AWS), we take care of all this setup.

This document is for customers running the RSpace directly on the host with a support agreement from ResearchSpace. Please refer to the rspace-docker repo on GitHub if you wish to run RSpace docker

This page lists the fundamental components of the RSpace application, and the software/hardware system setup needed.

RSpace is a web-based application, so end-users can access all functionality through their browsers and no software installation by users is necessary.

RSpace Components

A Java web application packaged as .war web application file (provided by RSpace).
Apache Tomcat 9 (installed by host)
A MariaDB database server (installed by host).
A database initialization script (provided by RSpace).
A Filestore for storing media or other binary files uploaded into RSpace (provided by host). This should be a regular file directory, mounted on a separate drive from the system drive to facilitate OS updates and backup.
A deployment.properties file allows ResearchSpace engineers or your qualified IT professionals to configure a number of server properties and behaviors. Instructions for working with the deployment.properties file are included in the installation file that came with your server (called something like: RSpaceConfiguration.md). See also: Additional Server Properties / Settings.

Requirements for Support

In order for RSpace Support to be able to install RSpace for you and also assist your IT team with RSpace updates and support for RSpace issues, your server MUST be accessible by RSpace Staff. This means the following:

If your server is publicly accessible, then SSH connections can be made via an IP whitelist and SSH credentials of your choice.
If your server is NOT publicly accessible, then we can connect to your VPN and then connect to SSH via a username/password or SSH certificate
- OpenVPN is our preferred VPN connection method, however we can connect to any VPN that is supported by the popular openconnect program.
- Due to security concerns, we are unable to connect to your VPN if it requires a proprietary client installed.
Access to the server via SSH (remote connection tools like TeamViewer, AnyDesk, etc are NOT supported)

If you do not want RSpace staff to be able to have access to your server all the time, you are free to limit connection access to your RSpace server (Eg. Only allow our VPN profile to access your network during pre-defined times). However, this may cause support requests to be delayed if our support staff need to access your server to troubleshoot and fix issues with RSpace

Software Requirements for the Web Server

RedHat Linux (or any distros based off RedHat such as Rocky, CentOS, etc..) are no longer supported for RSpace. Please use Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04 LTS

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS or 22.04 LTS (24.04 is not supported as it doesn't have a native package for tomcat9)
Java SDK version 17, openJDK-based build.
Apache web server v2.4. RSpace must be configured to support HTTPS using Apache ssl modules
Apache Tomcat 9.x
MariaDB 10.3. For small deployments of < 100 users this can be on the webserver; for larger deployments we recommend a dedicated database server.
The above components are on standard packages in Ubuntu 20.04 / 22.04 LTS
All of these can be installed by the customer IT team but remote install by our technicians is strongly recommended.
We supply a docker container to run on the server to perform document conversions to/from MSOffice format.
If you want us to do a full end-to-end installation, we just require a standard OS on the server and we will install all required software.

Hardware Requirements

A Linux-based server with at least 8Gb RAM. For larger installs ( > 100 users) we would recommend setting up two additional servers - one for the database and one for additional microservices.
WebServer: accept incoming HTTP requests on port 80 and HTTPS requests on port 443
DatabaseServer: can be on private network, with port 3306 open to WebServer. 8Gb RAM recommended initially.

MicroserviceServer: can be on private network, with ports 8081-8099 accepting incoming HTTP requests from WebServer. 4GB RAM is sufficient initially

Here is a very rough estimation of required resources for the main web server, based on our experience managing AWS t2/t3 instances

Number of users	Recommended RAM (Gb)	Recommended CPUs
< 50	8 ( t2.large)	2-4
50-250	16 ( t2.xlarge)	4-8
250 - 5000	32 ( t2.2xlarge)	8

Sufficient file storage, writable from the web application, to store files uploaded by end users. The default Filestore is a simple file-system accessible from the web server; RSpace just needs to be told the top-level folder of the file-system. The amount of storage depends hugely on the type of research and the users' work and usage of RSpace. Here is a rough estimate based on current usage.

Number of users	Initial storage requirements for setup and initial few months' usage	Storage should scale
<50	50Gb	1Gb/person/year
50-250	250Gb	1Gb/person/year
250 - 5000	250GB to 1Tb	1Gb/person/year

Sufficient disk space for the MariaDB database; as a rough initial estimate, 10-50Mb per user should be ample to begin with since files and raw data are stored on the filestore, not in the database. The database makes many IO operations. Ideally an SSD drive provides best performance.
For performance, the minimal performance should be comparable to that of AWS's t2.medium instance, which is our standard server used for up to 50 users. Here is a test of cpu and i/o performance using sysbench on an AWS t2.medium with standard gp2 SSD drive. Performance should be comparable to this for a minimal install.
> sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run
CPU speed:
events per second: 354.18
General statistics:
total time: 10.0012s
total number of events: 3543
Latency (ms):
   min: 2.80
   avg: 2.82
   max: 4.13
   95th percentile: 2.86
   sum: 9990.64

> sysbench --test=fileio --file-total-size=5G prepare

> sysbench --test=fileio --file-total-size=5G --file-test-mode=rndrw --max-time=300 --max-requests=0 run

File operations:

reads/s: 111.85

writes/s: 74.57

fsyncs/s: 238.22

Throughput:

read, MiB/s: 1.75

written, MiB/s: 1.17

General statistics:

total time: 300.3919s

total number of events: 127559

Latency (ms):

min: 0.00

avg: 2.35

max: 1426.36

95th percentile: 4.10

sum: 300047.73

Threads fairness:

events (avg/stddev): 127559.0000/0.00

execution time (avg/stddev): 300.0477/0.00

Other components

RSpace sends emails notifications to users, so access to a mail server is required. We can provide an email relay service.
RSpace will only run over HTTPS. Therefore, installation of a valid SSL certificate is required. Our staff can generate a CSR from the server once we have access to it.
RSpace uses additional software components to generate in-browser previews of MSOffice files and DNA sequence files - see Installation of RSpace add-on services for details.
If you would like RSpace to connect to your SingleSignOn mechanism, extra configuration is needed - please see Setting up SingleSignOn authentication.

Browser Requirements for End-Users

A modern, Javascript-enabled browser is essential for the HTML5 Canvas elements we use for sketching and image annotation. We aim to support current versions of Safari, Firefox and Chrome no more than 2 years old. RSpace may also work with newest versions of MS Edge, (now that it is Chromium-based), and other browsers like Opera, Brave and Chromium without issue, but we do not specifically support these. Please note we do not support older versions of Internet Explorer and will not address issues specific to this browser.

Starting, stopping, and restarting your RSpace server

RSpace is gracefully stopped or started using the command line to stop and start tomcat. The details can vary depending on your OS, and where and how tomcat was installed on your server. If you look for the installation file that came with your server (called something like: RSpaceConfiguration.md) you will see that the command for starting and stopping RSpace servers gracefully is provided there. If you are not comfortable with using the command line for this sort of task, you probably should ask for help from your University IT team or email Research Space support at support@researchspace.com.

For more information on hosting options, initial installation and installing updates for on-premise RSpace deployments see: Deploying RSpace.

Looking for instructions for installing or updating your on-premise RSpace server? Before installing or updating any on-premise RSpace server, always refer to the version-specific documentation files (e.g. RSpaceConfiguration.md) included with the download bundle for your version. Contact ResearchSpace for access to the download URL. For security reasons, you will not find those detailed instructions anywhere in this online documentation. Installation / update instructions are only available within the download bundle, and installation / update should only be attempted by qualified IT professionals.

If your organization has opted to manage your Enterprise Edition server, then it is absolutely critical that you assign appropriate IT resources to keep the server properly maintained. Additionally you MUST be able to support timely remote examination of your server by ResearchSpace support specialists as needed. If you allow you server to fall more than 4 major releases or one year behind the current release, and you need to request ResearchSpace assistance with a complex, multistep, server update or repair, then additional surcharges will apply.

Ultimately it is the customer's responsibility to make sure that you are using the latest version of RSpace. You can see the version of your RSpace server at the bottom left of the interface. It will be of the form 1.x.x. You can see the current release version in the changelog. Be sure to have your IT staff respond promptly to periodic update-related requests from ResearchSpace.