KNIME Server Installation Guide

We recommend that both the Tomcat server as well as the KNIME Server Executor are installed by the same user. This user does not need administration privileges. The recommended user name is knime. No other user requires write access to any files created during the installation.

We briefly describe the installation options available in this guide. For full details about any of the options see the KNIME Server Administration Guide.

Before you start, make sure that the latest Java JDK is installed (see Prerequisites).

The installer is called knime-server-installer-4.x.y.jar (where x.y is the current release number). The installer can be run by issuing the command (at the Linux terminal, or cmd.exe prompt):

Issuing the command will launch the installer GUI:

It is also possible to step through the installation via the command line. In this case issue the command:

The Java JDK version must be 1.8.x, and you should use the browse button to the select the folder that contains the bin folder.

The installation folder will (by default) contain all of the files that KNIME requires, which includes Tomcat, the KNIME Server Executor and the KNIME Server repository. The installation folder should be empty, and if it does not exist will be created. If prompted choose OK.

There are three options to choose from:

KNIME Server stores all workflows, and related configuration information in the KNIME Server Workflow Repository. The folder should exist on a local folder and have enough free space to store the workflows and jobs. We recommend a minimum of 100 GB, although this may need to be increased considerably depending on the intended use case.

By default, the KNIME Server Workflow Repository is created within the KNIME Server installation folder. It is possible to use a different location (e.g. on another hard drive) or an existing folder. In case the folder exists, the installer will not modify the folder, assuming that you pointed it to the workflow repository of a previous installation.

The KNIME Server application works only as expected if a valid license file is provided. If you have not received a license file, please contact KNIME (contact@knime.org), or get in touch with your local KNIME representative.

If you performed the installation without the license file, you can simply copy the KNIME Server license file into the <knime-server-repository>/licenses folder. The file name must end with .xml, and there is no need to restart the server after adding the license file.

KNIME Server and its clients communicate by either HTTP, or HTTPS. Default ports are 8080, and 8443. These ports can be changed in the range: 1024-49151.

The KNIME Server mountpoint is used to describe the KNIME Server to the clients that connect to it. For simple installations, the default name, or a simple name e.g. mycompany-knime is usually appropriate. For an environment with multiple KNIME Servers, mountpoints such as knime-server-prod or knime-server-dev would allow users to distinguish between development and production environments. For a full description of the mountpoint see the KNIME Server Administration Guide.

The Context Root (CONTEXT) is used to define the KNIME WebPortal URL. All WebPortal functionality will be available at:

Many administrative tasks on KNIME Server can be performed by the administrator user, e.g. setting workflow/file permissions, adding/removing users. The default username is knimeadmin, and the password is set to the hostname of the machine. It is strongly recommended that you change this password. If using LDAP authentication changes are required to the server.xml file in <installation-path/apache-tomee*/conf. Please refer to the KNIME Server Enterprise Setup Guide for full information.

The SMTP server, SMTP user, and 'from'-address can be altered. For advanced configuration options consult the KNIME Server Administration Guide.

The final four steps will install, and if successful launch KNIME Server. Under Windows a new command prompt window will appear, closing this window will shutdown KNIME Server. The penultimate page displays information about the installation, such as the URLs required to connect to the server. The final page is able to generate an automatic installation script that can be used to automate future installations.

Once successfully executed, the KNIME Server installer generates a file that can be saved. The xml file is called auto-install.xml and describes all parameters that were set during the installation process. In case you want to perform an installation using the same parameters you can simply run:

The installer reads out system properties specified on command-line, which are usually not required in a standard installation but can be useful for automated (update) scripts.

KNIME Server can be started and stopped using scripts in the <tomee folder>/bin folder. It is highly recommended that you follow the steps in the following section Automatically starting KNIME Server, this ensures that KNIME Server can be quickly and easily restarted.

For Linux/OS X restart with

and for Windows use

or

After restarting you should be able to access KNIME Server from both KNIME Analytics Platform and KNIME WebPortal (in your web browser). More details can be found in the KNIME Explorer User Guide and KNIME WebPortal User Guide.

The URL entered in the KNIME Analytics Platform mount point dialog is the same as for the WebPortal and defaults to

If you encounter problems please have a look at the log files (see section Log Files in the KNIME Server Administration Guide for details).

In some cases it may take quite some time (up to several minutes) until the server responds to requests on Linux systems. This is usually caused by insufficient entropy for the random number generator used by Tomcat. A description on how to remedy this issue is included in the KNIME Server Administration Guide

Depending on your Linux distribution you can define a SysVinit start script or systemd service as follows (as root user):

If you want to start and stop KNIME Server automatically under Windows, you need to create a Windows service. Run the batch file at <tomee-folder>\bin\service.install.as.admin.bat as user Administrator. It will create a Windows service called "Apache TomEE" that can be started and stopped like any other Windows service (Control Panel ⇒ Administrative Tools ⇒ Services).

You may want to change the memory settings for when TomEE is started as a service:

In order to uninstall the service execute <tomee-folder>\bin\service.removel.as.admin.bat as user Administrator.

If you want to know more details, have a look at the Tomcat documentation which describes this process in detail.
In places where the Tomcat documentation references "Tomcat7" executables, replace their names with TomEE.x86.exe or TomEE.amd64.exe depending on your architecture.