System and Firewall Requirements

Set up your computer's application and firewall for Console.

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Prepare your system for Aspera Console:

Operating System
  • Windows XP 32-bit and 64-bit (English)
  • Windows 2003 Server 32-bit and 64-bit (English)
  • Windows 2008 Server 32-bit and 64-bit (English)

IMPORTANT NOTE: Aspera strongly recommends installing Console on 64-bit Windows, as it is essential for maximizing MySQL performance.

  • Red Hat Linux 4 or 5
  • CentOS 4 or 5
Minimum Hardware Requirement
  • 2 GHz duo-core CPU or better
  • 4 GB of RAM
  • 2 GB of disk space
Application
  • If your computer has an existing MySQL database installed, make sure that it is not running during the installation.
  • If your computer has an existing Apache HTTP server installed, make sure that it is not running during the installation.
Node machine

In order to work with Console, node machines must have Aspera Enterprise Server or Aspera Point-to-Point, version 2.2.1 or higher, installed.

Firewall (on the Console machine)

Open the following ports on the Console machine:

  • For the Web UI, allow inbound connections for HTTP and/or HTTPS Web access (e.g. TCP/80, TCP/443).
  • Allow outbound connections for SSH (to be used for node administration) on a non-default, configurable TCP port (e.g. TCP/33001).
  • Allow an outbound connection for Aspera Central (e.g. TCP/40001).
  • Allow an inbound connection for MySQL (e.g. TCP/4406).
Firewall (on the Node Machines)

Open the following ports on the Node Machines (Aspera Enterprise, Connect or Faspex Servers, or Aspera Point-to-Point):

  • An Aspera server runs one SSH server on a configurable TCP port (22, by default, for Aspera Server 2.6, and 33001, by default, for Aspera Server 2.7)(22 by default). 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. For details on securing your individual Aspera transfer server product(s), please review their corresponding user manuals.
  • 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.
  • Allow an inbound connection for Aspera Central (e.g. TCP/40001).
  • Allow an outbound connection for logging to Console on TCP/4406.

The firewall on the server side must allow the open TCP port to reach the Aspera server. Note that no servers are listening 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 over which the data transfer will occur.

For Aspera servers that have multiple concurrent clients, the Windows operating system does not allow Aspera's fasp protocol to reuse the same UDP port for multiple connections. Thus, if you have multiple concurrent clients and your Aspera server runs on Windows, then you must allow inbound connections on a range of UDP ports, where the range of ports is equal to the maximum number of concurrent fasp transfers expected. These UDP ports should be opened incrementally from the base port, which is UDP/33001, by default. For example, to allow 10 concurrent fasp transfers, allow inbound traffic from UDP/33001 to UDP/33010.