Installation

beCPG is distributed as docker containers and the installation and the configuration of the application are performed by beCPG. This section describes what the customer has to provide: a properly sized virtual machine, network access and a few pieces of information beforehand.

Virtual machine sizing

Hardware prerequisites

The sizing depends on the number of concurrent users and on the volume of products managed:

Disk space:

• 1 system disk of 15 GB which include / and swap partitions
• 1 data disk of 50 GB whose volume depends mainly on the documents

Associated with the products, we can decompose the space used for 1,000 products as follows:

• Database space: about 10 GB
• Space for full text search index: about 10 GB
• Space for related documents: 10 GB (1,000 products * 10 MB)

¹. With these metrics, N concurrent users are considered 10xN occasional users. ↩

². 2 CPUs are equivalent to 1 dual-core ↩

Sizing of the optional modules

Two modules are optional and are only installed when they have been subscribed to:

• beCPG OLAP — Business Intelligence: analysis cubes and decision dashboards;
• beCPG AI — the "Chef AI" assistant, suggestions and recipe optimization.

They can be hosted on the beCPG server or on a separate server. The resources below are added to the sizing of the previous table when they are installed on the same machine:

beCPG OLAP module

• The disk required follows the volume of data analysed: count roughly 1 GB per 1,000 products, with a 10 GB minimum.
• The cube synchronisation runs periodically (every 2 hours by default); the CPU load is concentrated on those runs.
• The module data is backed up together with the rest of the instance (see Backup).

beCPG AI module

• The module stores no business data: there is no database and no extra volume to back up.
• 4 GB of RAM is enough for up to about ten simultaneous users of the assistant; plan 6 GB beyond that.
• Recipe optimization is a compute intensive task: reserve 2 CPUs, 4 if you frequently optimize complex recipes.
• Outbound HTTPS access to the AI provider is mandatory. Without it the assistant is unavailable; the rest of the PLM is not affected.

Hosting on a separate server

If you want to isolate these modules on another machine, plan the RAM and the CPU of the table above plus the system baseline (2 GB of RAM / 1 CPU):

Additional network flows must then be opened between both servers; they are listed in the installation checklist provided by beCPG.

⁴. The AI provider API key is supplied and configured by beCPG, unless you want to use your own subscription. ↩

Software prerequisites

beCPG is distributed as a docker container allowing it to run on any server. beCPG provides automatic installation and full support for the installation of containers in the following environment Ubuntu Server >= 26.04 LTS 64 bits.³

Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS 64 bits can be installed on a virtualized, dedicated or cloud server.

Download address for ISO images: [https://www.ubuntu.com/download/server]

³. beCPG can also be deployed on a kupernete environment like Amazon EKS, Google cloud or other. However, this will not be the subject of this documentation. ↩

The rest of the documentation is based on the use of a Linux Ubuntu >= 26.04 LTS 64 bits virtual machine .

Installation Tutorial: https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutorial/tutorial-install-ubuntu-server

Network prerequisites

The network flows to allow on your firewalls are detailed in the installation checklist sent by beCPG at the beginning of the project. They must be open before the installation takes place: without them, the download of the components fails.

Prerequisite client item

A post able to run a modern browser such as Firefox, a PDF reader and a suite office.

• 2 CPU
• 4 GB of RAM
• Temporary storage space when editing documents (space took by documents in edition)

Server installation

The installation is performed by beCPG from a supplied script, run on the virtual machine made available. It installs the following components:

• Git
• Docker and Docker Compose
• The system utilities required for operation

The script creates the data partition, downloads the beCPG docker images, then configures and starts the application.

On the host machine, under /opt/becpg-srv-instances, you will find the installation folder of beCPG. The important files are:

/opt/becpg-srv-instances/inst1/.env
/opt/becpg-srv-instances/inst1/README.md
/opt/becpg-srv-instances/inst1/docker-compose.yml
/opt/becpg-srv-instances/inst1/docker-compose.override.yml
/opt/becpg-srv-instances/inst1/ssl/000-default.conf
/opt/becpg-srv-instances/inst1/tunning/mysql.cnf
/opt/becpg-srv-instances/inst1/tools/
/opt/becpg-srv-instances/inst1/info/
/opt/becpg-srv-instances/inst1/ids/

These files hold the configuration and the secrets of the instance. They are maintained by beCPG: do not modify them without prior validation from the support team.

Partition

By default, beCPG creates a new partition on the data disk. This partition contains all the data of the application, the containers and the docker volumes.

The mount point is /mnt/becpg-data by default

Sample script to create the new data partition on disk /dev/sdb

mkdir /mnt/becpg-data
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb
echo "/dev/sdb    /mnt/becpg-data   ext4    rw,noatime,data=writeback,barrier=0,nobh,errors=remount-ro,x-systemd.automount,x-initrd.mount  0    1" >> /etc/fstab
mount -a

Deploy a new version of beCPG

The deployment of beCPG and its update are done with docker compose. The commands are as follows:

cd /opt/becpg-srv-instances/inst1
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

or, equivalently:

cd /opt/becpg-srv-instances/inst1
./tools/instance.sh deploy

A version upgrade may require a data migration or a reindexing. Version upgrades are scheduled with beCPG, which indicates the applicable procedure.

Optional modules (OLAP / AI)

The beCPG OLAP and beCPG AI modules are enabled and configured by beCPG at installation time or during a later intervention. On the customer side, the following must have been planned:

• the additional resources described in Sizing of the optional modules;
• the matching network flows, listed in the installation checklist, in particular the outbound access to the AI provider for the beCPG AI module.

Once enabled, these modules appear directly in the application interface: the OLAP module feeds the decision dashboards, the AI module the "Chef AI" assistant. Their usage is described in the user manual.