Install MATLAB Online Server on Cloud-Managed Kubernetes

These instructions are for installing MATLAB^® Online Server™ on cloud-managed Kubernetes.

If you are installing the server on Red Hat^® OpenShift^® specifically, see Install MATLAB Online Server on Red Hat OpenShift.

Note

These instructions include sudo for commands that by default require administration privileges. Depending on how your environment is configured, sudo might not be required in some cases.

Verify Installation Prerequisites

Make sure your system meets the following requirements:

Push and pull access to the remote Docker^® repository
Existing Kubernetes^® cluster on Azure^® AKS, Amazon^® EKS, or Google^® GKE^®
- Supported node
  Refer to Supported Platforms.
- Support for network policy
  Security Considerations: MATLAB Online Server creates NetworkPolicy resources, which are silently ignored if the cluster is not created with network policy enabled. Network policy specifies which pods can communicate with each other. Because it is important from a security standpoint, network policy is enabled by default in MATLAB Online Server.
  If your cluster does not have a container network interface (CNI) that supports network policies, then MATLAB Online Server functions properly but not securely. This configuration is not recommended.
  Refer to documentation from your specific cloud provider for more details on how to enable network policy in the Kubernetes cluster.

On the machine that will communicate with the managed cluster to deploy MATLAB Online Server (client machine), complete the following software checks before downloading and then configuring MATLAB Online Server.

Check that the machine meets the software and hardware requirements described in MATLAB Online Server System Requirements.
You can access the cluster’s kubeconfig file from the client machine.
Helm^® 3 is installed.
kubectl is installed.

Set Up Licensing

MATLAB Online Server requires two license servers: one for MATLAB Online Server and one for MATLAB. On each machine you plan to use as a license server, install an instance of the MathWorks^® network license manager by following the offline Linux^® instructions described in Install License Manager on License Server. Alternatively, you can use an existing license server. When setting up the license servers:

Configure each license server to be accessed over the network.
Update the network license manager software to the latest version by following the instructions in Update Network License Manager Software.
Make sure that MATLAB workers have access to their MathWorks licenses. Those licenses can be either co-located on the same license server or on independent servers.
Specify the MATLAB and MATLAB Online Server license hostnames and ports using the <port>@<host>[,<port>@<other-host>] format. The hostname and port must be accessible from inside the Kubernetes cluster.
On each license server, add these lines to your license file to fix communication with the network license manager and the MLM daemon to ports 27000 and 27001, respectively.
```
SERVER <host-id> ID=0 27000
DAEMON MLM "<license-server-root>/etc/MLM" port=27001
```
By default, the MATLAB Online Server network policy enables access to these ports. Running the network license manager and MLM daemon on different ports is supported, but this configuration requires additional updates to your MATLAB Online Server network policy.
If you are restricting access to toolboxes or licenses by username, you must allow mwuser, the username of the license service that runs in the Kubernetes cluster, to check out licenses for MATLAB Online Server. In the etc folder of the network license manager for MATLAB Online Server, add this line to your MLM.opt options file:
```
INCLUDE MATLAB_Online_Server USER mwuser
```
Depending on how your organization configures accounts, you might need to create an mwuser account to enable the license options file.

If the license server is configured correctly, then the license service running in the Kubernetes cluster runs without any errors and checks out the license when it starts. If the license is invalid or the license server cannot be reached, then the license service exits and Kubernetes automatically attempts to restart the license service periodically until it succeeds.

The other services require that the license server is running, but if the license is temporarily unavailable, they continue to run. After an approximately two-hour grace period, the services go into a hibernation state and then reject requests with a failed status. The logs of the services indicate when they enter or exit this hibernation or grace period state.

If you encounter any issues with the license service, see Resolve License Service Issues.

Download MATLAB Online Server

Download Installer

Follow these steps to download and then extract the MATLAB Online Server installer and files.

Go to the Downloads page on mathworks.com.
Under Select Release, select the current release, for example, R2024b.
Expand the Get MATLAB Online Server section. This section appears only if your account has a license for MATLAB Online Server software.
Click Download to download the ZIP file.
In the download folder or folder of your choice, extract the installation files. For example, this command downloads the ZIP file to your home directory (~/).
```
unzip R2024b_matlab_online_server.zip -d ~/
```
The unzipped matlab_online_server folder is the root folder of your MATLAB Online Server installation. Navigate to this folder. For example, if you unzipped the folder into your home directory, run this command.
```
cd ~/matlab_online_server
```
Confirm that this folder contains the following files and subfolders.
```
ls
```
- attributions.txt — Third-party software license attributions file, which is also included in each release container image
- data — Folder that stores MATLAB Online Server data
- install.config — File that contains properties for configuring your MATLAB Online Server installation
- mosadm — Command-line executable for installing and configuring MATLAB Online Server
- thirdpartylicenses.txt — Third-party software license file, which is also included in each release container image
The mosadm command is the main utility to perform the remaining installation steps. You must run this command from your MATLAB Online Server installation folder. For details on the various operations it can perform, run this command.
```
./mosadm help
```

Configure Installation Properties

Edit the install.config file, located in the folder where you unzipped the installer, using a text editor such as nano.

nano install.config

Before editing this file, consider creating a backup of install.config so that you have a record of the default settings.

At a minimum, set these parameter values.

Configuration Parameter	Value
`DOMAIN_BASE`	Fully qualified domain name for accessing MATLAB Online Server from a web browser. Specifying an IP address as the domain base is not supported. Example: `matlabonline.mycompany.com`
`DOCKER_REGISTRY`	Remote Docker registry to push Docker images to. Example: `myregistry.mycompany.com`
`DOCKER_REPOSITORY`	Remote Docker repository. Example: `mos`
`IMAGE_PULL_SECRET`	User-friendly name for the Kubernetes secret object. When you deploy MATLAB Online Server, this object is created from registry credentials. This secret enables the nodes to pull images from the remote registry. Example: `mymossecret`
`ML_PASSWORD`	Administrator password you want to use to log in to MATLAB Online™. The default is `password`.
`MOS_LICENSE_SERVER`	Port and hostname of your MATLAB Online Server license server. Use the `port@host` format. Example: `27000@myhostname`
`MATLAB_LICENSE_SERVER`	Port and hostname of your MATLAB license server. Use the `port@host` format. Example: `27000@myhostname`

Specify additional properties for your deployment as needed. For example, you can update the namespace to use for the deployment or enable TLS security. For a complete list of parameters, see Installation Configuration Properties.

Install Third-Party Software

Install NGINX Ingress Controller

The NGINX ingress controller processes incoming requests to the Kubernetes cluster and acts as a load balancer for MATLAB Online Server.

Note

If you are using your own ingress controller, skip this step and see Configure NGINX Ingress Controller instead.

(Prerequisite for GKE only) If you are deploying the NGINX^® Ingress Controller on a GKE cluster, create a clusterrolebinding for the specific user as shown:

kubectl create clusterrolebinding cluster-admin-binding \
> --clusterrole cluster-admin \
> --user <userid>

Install the controller by using the mosadm install-ingress command. The command displays the options it uses to configure the controller.

./mosadm install-ingress

# Config file for an ingress-nginx helm deploy
rbac:
  create: true

controller:
  hostNetwork: true
  ...

Verify that the controller is installed correctly. The default namespace for the installation is mathworks. You can customize this name in a later step.

kubectl get pods --namespace mathworks

NAME                                                  READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
mathworks-ingress-nginx-controller-7fdcd49d74-zngv4   1/1     Running   0          54s

Install MATLAB Online Server

Install MATLAB Online Server and MATLAB, deploy the server, and verify that the installation was successful by signing in to MATLAB Online.

Get Container Artifacts

From the MathWorks container registry, get the container artifacts required to install and deploy MATLAB Online Server. These artifacts include:

The Kubernetes Helm charts used to configure the services deployed to MATLAB Online Server.
The Docker images used to create the MATLAB containers and other software running in those services.

Copy the required Helm charts from the MathWorks container registry into the MATLAB Online Server root folder, in a folder named charts.
```
sudo ./mosadm copy-helm-charts
```
Load the required Docker images from the MathWorks container registry into the local container cache of your computer. List the images in this cache to confirm that they loaded correctly.
```
sudo ./mosadm load-docker-images
sudo ./mosadm list-docker-images
```
```
Listing images
containers.mathworks.com/matlab-online-server/mos-matlab-image:n.n.n
...
```

Install MATLAB

Install MATLAB and build an image from that installation. MATLAB Online Server uses this image to create the MATLAB containers that users connect to.

Download and install MATLAB by using the mosadm install-matlab command.
- (Basic installation) Install the latest MATLAB release into the folder /MATLAB on your computer. If this folder does not exist, the command creates it.
```
sudo ./mosadm install-matlab
```
- (Custom installation) Customize the installation folder, MATLAB release, or products to install. For example, this command installs the R2024b release of MATLAB and Simulink^® into the /opt/MATLAB folder on your computer.
```
sudo ./mosadm install-matlab --matlab-root /opt/MATLAB --matlab-version R2024b --products "MATLAB Simulink"
```
Build an image containing this MATLAB installation. If you specified a custom MATLAB installation folder, replace /MATLAB with the folder path you specified in the --matlab-root option of mosadm install-matlab. This step can take several minutes.
```
sudo ./mosadm build-matlab-image /MATLAB
```
Note
To build this image, your machine must have a TMPDIR environment variable that specifies a writable temporary directory mounted in exec mode. For details on applying this configuration, see Tips in the mosadm build-matlab-image documentation.

Push Docker Images to Image Registry

Push the loaded and built Docker images to the remote image registry. The registry location is specified by the DOCKER_REGISTRY property of the install.config file.

Some cloud providers, such as AWS^®, require you to create a repository for your images before pushing them to the remote registry. If required, create this repository by following the documentation for your cloud provider.
Push the Docker images to the remote registry.
```
sudo ./mosadm push-docker-images
```
(optional) To allow cluster nodes to use Docker images, you must provide credentials to access the registry. If your cluster already has permissions for pushing images to the remote registry, then skip this step.
Copy the registry credentials file into your MATLAB Online Server installation. If you have logged in to the remote registry from your client machine at least one time, then the file containing the registry credentials is located at ~/.docker/config.json. For example:
```
cp ~/.docker/config.json ./dockerconfig.json
```
The server uses contents from this file to create a Kubernetes secret with the name specified by the IMAGE_PULL_SECRET property of the install.config file.

Generate Overrides Files for Customizing Server

With the cluster and Docker images ready to use, load the server configuration override files. These YAML files enable you to override the default configuration of the server so that you can customize your server deployment.

Generate the override files. Specify the --skip-matlab-image option to skip tagging the MATLAB Docker image locally. This image has already been pushed to your remote Docker repository.
```
./mosadm generate-overrides --skip-matlab-image
```
The override files are generated to this folder:
```
<server-root>/overrides/<cluster-name>/<namespace-name>
```
- <server-root> is the MATLAB Online Server root folder.
- <cluster-name> is the name of the server cluster.
- <namespace-name> is the name of the server namespace.
For example:
```
~/matlab_online_server/overrides/matlab-online-server/mathworks
```
Confirm that the generated folder contains the following files.
```
ls ./overrides/<cluster-name>/<namespace-name>
```
- all.yaml — Configure global server settings
- authnz.yaml — Configure user authentication and authorization
- core-ui.yaml — Configure user interface elements, such as the MATLAB Online login screen
- gateway.yaml — Configure the mapping between MATLAB Online Server clients and their assigned MATLAB instances
- license.yaml — Configure communication with the license server
- matlab-pool.yaml — Configure the MATLAB resource pool
- namespace.yaml — Configure the namespace used to deploy MATLAB Online Server
- resource.yaml — Configure access to storage resources

Apply the necessary configuration updates to these override files.

Configuration	Instructions
Configure Documentation. (Required only for MATLAB Online Server R2023a or later) Enable the server to access the documentation that you installed to the `/MATLAB/SupportPackages/help` folder. If you specified a folder other than `/MATLAB` when installing MATLAB, change `/MATLAB` to that folder path.	In the `matlab-pool.yaml` file, in the `matlab` field, add a `helpDocRoot` subfield and specify the full path to the `help` folder. Sample YAML: matlab: helpDocRoot: "/MATLAB/SupportPackages/help" installation: ...

Deploy MATLAB Online Server

To install all the MATLAB Online Server components, run the mosadm deploy command:
```
./mosadm deploy
```
This command uses Helm to install all the charts, customized with any overrides from the previous step.

Check that all services are running by using kubectl. Replace <namespace-name> with the namespace you used for MATLAB Online Server (default = mathworks). Depending on how you configured the server and the platform on which you installed the server, the exact pods you see might differ from the ones shown here.

kubectl get pods --namespace <namespace-name>

NAME                                                     READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
<namespace-name>-authnz-7994c9866d-675fb                   1/1     Running   0          10m
<namespace-name>-core-ui-cfdcccc4c-5bhrc                   1/1     Running   0          10m
<namespace-name>-gateway-88ffd446d-mbf2l                   1/1     Running   0          10m
<namespace-name>-gateway-proxy-6f85db9cbb-8ftbr            1/1     Running   0          10m
<namespace-name>-gateway-proxy-6f85db9cbb-mdhr7            1/1     Running   0          10m
<namespace-name>-license-5cc85b97cd-zg4vd                  1/1     Running   0          10m
<namespace-name>-matlab-pool-9cc6b6465-9rdz8               2/2     Running   0          6m54s
<namespace-name>-matlab-pool-9cc6b6465-t7wp2               2/2     Running   0          3m40s
<namespace-name>-matlab-pool-helpsearch-8479fbdc88-4r6sd   1/1     Running   0          6m54s
<namespace-name>-matlab-pool-ui-8484bbbd4d-t6777           1/1     Running   0          6m54s
<namespace-name>-resource-78f9b97745-fzwlq                 1/1     Running   0          10m

The pods running MATLAB can take several minutes to start running. It is important to wait until the pods are in the ready state. If any of the containers do not start running, check the license server and the install.config settings. See Resolve MATLAB Pod Issues.

Configure DNS

After you install MATLAB Online Server, configure the domain name system (DNS) so that users when users access MATLAB Online from a browser, they are routed to the correct IP address.

Get the external IP address of the cluster from the ingress controller service. If you installed the NGINX ingress controller using mosadm install-ingress, to find the external IP address, use this command:
```
kubectl get service --namespace mathworks
```
Using an external DNS service (for example, Amazon Route 53), route the DOMAIN_BASE parameter defined in install.config to this IP address.

Verify Installation

Make sure the address in the DOMAIN_BASE parameter defined in install.config is registered and can be routed to the IP address of the host machine. Run this command, replacing <domain-base> with the value of the DOMAIN_BASE parameter:
```
ping -c 1 <domain-base>
```
This command returns the IP address of the host machine. In some types of installation, the ping does not receive packets. If you have such an installation, this command returns the IP address of the server you ping.
Open a browser on another machine and then go to the address where you are hosting MATLAB Online:
```
<domain-base>/matlabonline
```
Your browser window displays the MATLAB Online login screen. For a single-machine installation, use the username admin and the password you specified in the ML_PASSWORD parameter of install.config (the default is password).

If you can now access your internal version of MATLAB Online, installation is complete. If you cannot access MATLAB Online, or you run into any other technical error, contact MathWorks Support.

Configure MATLAB Online Server

Complete the configuration steps required to set up the server for your organization.

Configure user authentication and authorization by specifying your identity provider details. See Authentication and Authorization.
Configure persistent storage and which directories, drives, and files users can access. See Storage.
Configure your MATLAB installations or integrate other MathWorks products into the server. See MATLAB Configuration.
Set up monitoring and observability software on the server so that you can monitor the health of the server and troubleshoot issues as they arise. See Monitoring and Observability.