Integration Guides › Metering Service Reference Guide › Metering Gateway Installation and Configuration

Metering Gateway Installation and Configuration

The metering gateway application is a metering gateway that accepts metering data from grids within a customer's datacenter and forwards that data to CA's metering system. In addition, MGT provides an interface through which the customer may manage the SSL certificate MGT uses to communicate with CA's basic metering system (BMS).

Note: The grid on which the MGT application is running must have access to the internet because MGT communicates with CA's metering server. If no Internet access exists, you can download the MGT (Metering Gateway) application from Cloud Commons. For installations that cannot communicate to the BMS, the MGT provides a gateway through which grids running in a single datacenter can report license and metering data to BMS. This is useful for datacenters that are private or isolated from publicly routed networks, such as the Internet or where business or security policies restrict the SSH protocol from traversing a firewall. For additional information, refer to the MGT - Metering Gateway Application section of the Marketplace Catalog Reference.

Initial Application Setup

Follow these steps:

Download and copy the application to the CA AppLogic distro , such as , /root/applogic-3.7
From the distro, import the application to the grid:
```
./aldo ai grid=<grid name> applications=MGT
```
Login to your grid and resize the data volume. The size of the data volume should be sufficient to store at least 30 days of metering data for all grids that report to this instance of MGT (approximately 4 MB per grid for 30 days of metering data). For example, to resize the data volume to 3 GB, execute:
```
vol resize MGT:data size=3G
```
Configure the application. To access a list of the configurable parameters, entering execute:
```
app config MGT --boundary
```
Start the application by entering:
```
app start MGT
```
Setup the client-side SSL certificate.

Client-side SSL Certificate Setup

To setup the SSL certificate that MGT uses to authenticate itself with CA's metering system, login to the MGT application (app login MGT). Upon logging into the application, you are presented with the following simple text menu used to manage the SSL certificate that is used to communicate with CA's metering system:

Metering Gateway SSL Certificate Management Utility - version 1.0.0
Copyright 2006-2008 3Tera Inc.
   A. Create new SSL certificate
   B. Delete current SSL certificate
   C. Display current SSL certificate
   D. Test notifications
   Q. Exit

   Please enter selection -->

The 'Create new SSL certificate' menu option generates a new SSL certificate. If an SSL certificate already exists, the user is prompted before deleting the existing certificate and generating a new one. Upon successful certificate creation, the certificate signature request is displayed and the user is instructed to e-mail the certificate signature request to CA so that the certificate can be signed. The signed certificate is to be installed on the data volume, see Installing SSL Certificate for instructions on how to copy the signed certificate to the data volume.

The 'Delete current SSL certificate' menu option deletes the SSL certificate for the account.

The 'Display current SSL certificate' menu option displays either the signed SSL certificate or the certificate signature request. If the certificate has already been signed, the signed certificate is displayed. If the certificate has not been signed, the certificate signature request is displayed and the user is instructed to e-mail the certificate signature request to CA so that the certificate can be signed.

The 'Test notifications' menu option verifies that a message can be written to the dashboard of the grid controller. The user is prompted to verify that the dashboard displays the message and that any recipients of email notifications received the email from the grid controller.

Installing SSL Certificate

Follow these steps to install a signed SSL certificate from CA on the Metering Gateway.

Start the Metering Gateway application. A message should be logged to the grid dashboard specifying the SSL certificate is missing.
Login into the MGT application and create the SSL certificate (That is, select the Create new SSL certificate option).
Copy and paste the displayed certificate signature request into an e-mail and send it to CA technical support.
When CA technical support replies with the signed certificate, save the certificate to your local machine.
As a grid user (not an administrator), scp the certificate to the data volume from your local machine:
```
scp <signed SSL certificate file> <grid IP>:/app/mgt/data/mnt/data/ssl/mgt.cert
```
Verify the signed SSL certificate has been copied by logging into the MGT application and selecting the Display current SSL certificate menu option.
Restart the mgt appliance:
```
comp restart MGT:main.mgt
```
Verify no error messages are logged to the grid dashboard. If there are error messages, please contact CA technical support.

Configuring Grids to Use the Metering Gateway

You must configure new and existing grids to report their metering data to the MGT application.

Follow these steps:

In the command line, configure the account_srv parameter in the default conf file to the value of the in_ip property of the running MGT application.
The account_srv parameter is a backbone setting that affects all grids.
When complete, exit the command line.