System Requirements

Overall Requirements

Operating System
  • RedHat 6 & 7
  • CentOS 6 & 7
  • SLES 11
Browsers
  • Internet Explorer 9-11
  • Firefox 27-44
  • Safari 6-9
  • Google Chrome 40-48
Aspera Product Version Requirements
  • IBM Aspera Enterprise Server 3.6.0+
  • Aspera Common Components v1.1.22
  • IBM Aspera Connect 3.6.1+
Memory
  • 8 GB RAM
Applications
  • If your computer has an existing MySQL database installed, ensure that it is not running during the installation.
  • If your computer has an existing Apache HTTP server installed, ensure that it is not running during the installation.

Firewall Settings

An Aspera server runs one SSH server on a configurable TCP port (22 by default).

Your firewall should be configured as follows:

  • To ensure that your server is secure, Aspera strongly recommends allowing inbound connections for SSH on TCP/33001 (or on another non-default, configurable TCP port), and disallowing inbound connections on TCP/22. If you have a legacy customer base utilizing TCP/22, then you can allow inbound connections on both ports.

    Open your SSH configuration file in a text editor. The configuration file is located in the following directory: /etc/ssh/sshd_config.

    Add the line Port 33001 to the configuration file to enable access to port 33001. If you are also using port 22 for shell access to the server you also need to add or uncomment the line Port 22 in the config file.

    Restart the SSH server to apply your new settings:

    # service sshd restart
  • Allow inbound connections for FASP transfers, which use UDP/33001 by default, although the server may also choose to run FASP transfers on another port.
  • If you have a local firewall on your server (such as iptables), verify that it is not blocking your SSH and FASP transfer ports (TCP/UDP 33001).
  • For the Faspex application, allow inbound connections for HTTP and/or HTTPS Web access (TCP/80, TCP/443).

The firewall on the server side must allow the open TCP port to reach the Aspera server. No servers listen on UDP ports. When a transfer is initiated by an Aspera client, the client opens an SSH session to the SSH server on the designated TCP port and negotiates the UDP port for the data transfer.

Faspex Domain name

Aspera recommends creating a domain name for Faspex. If Faspex is configured to identify itself by IP address (rather than by domain name), then the URLs in your notification emails contain an IP address (for example, "https://10.0.0.1/aspera/faspex"). Some Web-based email services (such as Yahoo or Ymail, and Hotmail) have been known to automatically flag emails containing IP address links as "Spam," and move them to your Junk/Spam folder. If you do not have a domain name immediately available, then you can first configure Faspex with an IP address and then change it to use a domain name later.

If you know that you will not be setting up a domain name, make sure that users add your Faspex "From" email address (for example, admin@faspex.example.com) to their address book or contact list. Doing so typically "white-lists" the address so that emails from Faspex are not automatically flagged and routed the Junk/Spam folder.

CAUTION:
Do not configure Faspex to use a domain name or hostname that contains underscore characters. Doing so could prevent you from logging into the server or cause other connectivity problems. Internet standards for domain names and hostnames do not support underscore characters.

Drag-and-Drop Support

Faspex supports the dragging and dropping of files and folders for transfer, but this support varies by platform and browser. See the table below for details on how this release of Faspex supports drag-and-drop in your environment:

Browser Windows Client Mac OS X Client Linux Client
Firefox Files and folders Files and folders Drag-and-drop not supported
Chrome Files and folders Files and folders Drag-and-drop not supported
IE 8 and 9* Files and folders
IE 10 and 11* Files
Edge* Drag-and-drop not supported
Safari Files and folders

* Internet Explorer is limited in support for drag-and-drop because of how it records drop events. Edge does not support drag-and-drop from the system into the browser. For further information, see

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ec3c0be0-0834-4873-8e94-700e9df9c822/edge-browser-drag-and-drop-files-not-working?forum=ieitprocurrentver

https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/257854-microsoft-edge-developer/suggestions/8964523-support-html5-drag-and-drop-of-files-from-explorer?page=1&per_page=20