Installing Archivematica¶
On this page
Overview¶
The following table lists all help topics on installing Archivematica for various intended uses and host environments.
If you need assistance or clarification regarding the installation instructions, the Archivematica user forum is a good place ask questions.
Intended use | Environment | Related documents | Notes |
Test-driving the latest release | Archivematica sandbox | Using the sandbox | The sandbox will automatically reset daily. Any packages created will not be permanently saved. Additionally, there may be more than one demo user logged in at the same time, so you may see changes made by others while using the software. |
Local virtual machine using Vagrant and VirtualBox | Installing on a virtual machine using Vagrant | This virtual machine is not intended to be used in production. | |
New installations – Production deployment | Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit Server Edition | Automated install using Ansible > Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty) | These instructions will not work if you are using a Windows machine as the host environment. For Windows installations, see the manual install instructions for production. |
Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit Server Edition | Automated install using Ansible > Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) | These instructions will not work if you are using a Windows machine as the host environment. For Windows installations, see the manual install instructions for production. | |
Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit Server Edition ( Experimental support ) | Automated install using Ansible > Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic) | Ansible playbooks for Ubuntu 18.04 are available but experimental. | |
CentOS 7 64-bit | Installing Archivematica on CentOS/Red Hat | Archivematica versions 1.5.1 and higher support installation on CentOS/Red Hat. | |
Windows OS | Not supported | ||
Development | Docker and Linux | Installing Archivematica Using Docker Compose on Linux | Docker will provide instructions on how to use it as a non-root user. This may not be desirable for all. |
Docker and Mac | Installing Archivematica Using Docker Compose on Mac | Installation of Archivematica on machines running macOS using Docker is possible but still in development and may require some extra steps. | |
Spreading Archivematica’s processing load across several machines | Base on your customized setup and network configuration | Installing across multiple machines | When installing Archivematica on multiple machines, the various Archivematica processes must be able to reach each other on the relevant ports. Your firewall configuration must allow for this. |
Technical requirements¶
Operating system¶
Archivematica 1.7.0 installation instructions are provided here for the following operating systems:
- Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit Server Edition
- Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit Server Edition
- Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit Server Edition (experimental support)
- CentOS 7 64-bit
Archivematica 1.7 is the first release to be tested on Ubuntu 16.04. Support for this OS is still considered beta; installation has been tested but production deployments are limited.
Other Linux distributions should work, but will require customization of these installation instructions.
Support for macOS is possibly in theory, but is not being tested, and would require more significant deviation from these instructions.
Archivematica is unlikely to ever run directly in a Windows environment. Consider the use of a virtualization platform to run Linux VMs.
Dependencies¶
Archivematica has a long list of software it depends on. All of these dependencies are installed when following the instructions below.
Note that it is possible to install some of the components on separate machines in order to improve performance, such as:
- MySQL
- Gearman
- Elasticsearch (optional as of Archivematica 1.7, see below)
Using additional machines will require additional configuration. For more information, see Advanced.
Note
Archivematica 1.7 has been tested with MySQL 5.5, including the Percona and MariaDB alternatives. Archivematica uses MySQL 5.7 on Ubuntu 16.04.
Some of the tools run by Archivematica require Java to be installed (primarily Elasticsearch and fits). On Ubuntu 14.04, Open JDK 7 is used. On Ubuntu 16.04, Open JDK 8 is the default. It is possible to use Oracle Java 7 or 8 instead.
The remaining dependencies should be kept at the versions installed by Archivematica.
Elasticsearch¶
Installing Elasticsearch to provide a search index is now optional as of Archivematica version 1.7. Installing Archivematica without Elasticsearch means reduced consumption of compute resources and lower operational complexity. However, some functionality, such as the Backlog, Appraisal and Archival Storage tabs, is not available.
When Elasticsearch is used, Archivematica 1.7.0 requires version 1.x (tested with 1.7.6). Support for a more recent version of Elasticsearch is being developed and is planned for a future release.
Hardware¶
Archivematica is capable of running on almost any hardware supported by Linux; however, processing large collections will require better hardware.
Browser compatability¶
Archivematica has been tested most extensively with Firefox and Chrome. There are known issues with Internet Explorer 11 which result in an inability to start transfers in the dashboard (Issue 7246). Minimal, but successful, testing has been done with Microsoft Edge.
Minimum hardware requirements¶
For small-scale functionality testing using small collections (transfers with 100 files or less, total file size 1 GB or smaller), we recommend the following minimum hardware requirements:
- Processor: 2 CPU cores
- Memory: 2GB+
- Disk space (processing): 7GB plus two to three times the disk space required for the collection being processed (e.g., 3GB to process a 1GB transfer)
Recommended minimum production requirements¶
For production processing, the hardware requirements depend almost entirely on the size and number of files being processed. These recommendations should be considered the minimum for a viable production system:
- Processor: 2 CPU cores
- Memory: 4GB
- Disk space (processing): 200GB
More commonly, we deploy the following:
- Processor: 8 CPU cores
- Memory: 16GB
For processing disk space, we recommend allocating 20GB plus four times the disk space required for the largest transfer that you expect to process. If your largest transfer is 50GB, allocation at least 220GBs of disk space.
The amount of transfer source disk space needed is subjective, and depends on individual workflows.
The amount of storage disk space needed will depend on how much material you intend to store, as well as how it is stored (compressed or uncompressed).
These requirements may not be suitable for certain types of material - for example, audio-visual material requires more processing power than images or documents.
Instructions for new installations¶
Archivematica can be installed using packages or Ansible scripts in either CentOS/Red Hat or Ubuntu environments. It can also be installed using Docker. At this time, installation instructions are provided for officially tested and supported installation environments:
- Automated install on Ubuntu (14.04 and 16.04) using Ansible. Ansible playbooks for Ubuntu 18.04 are also available, but experimental
- Manual install of OS packages on CentOS/Red Hat
Manual install of OS packages on Ubuntu (14.04 and 16.04) is documented but not officially supported.
Installing Archivematica using Docker is not officially supported for production deployments. However, it is the preferred development environment for those who work on Archivematica’s code.
For more information about installation environments, please see the ansible-archivematica-src repo, the deploy-pub repo, and ask on the Archivematica user forum for more details.
If you are upgrading from a previous version of Archivematica, please see the upgrading instructions.
Advanced installation options¶
There are many ways to install Archivematica, depending on the needs of the individual user. We have documented some common advanced installation setups.