Before deploying, review the supported deployment targets and overall system architecture.

• Supported Cloud Providers: Cloud provider environments validated and tested by NI for production deployments.
• SystemLink Environment Architecture: Kubernetes cluster architecture diagrams, including components, protocols, and communication paths.

Use the pre-installation checklist and sizing guidance to prepare your infrastructure and choose a deployment profile.

• Preparing to Host and Operate SystemLink Enterprise: A checklist of all computing, network, storage, and security prerequisites with validation steps for each.
• Deployment Size Recommendations: Sizing tables with recommended resource allocations.

Provision and configure all required infrastructure before running the Helm installation.

• Required Kubernetes Infrastructure: Kubernetes cluster requirements, including cloud-specific EKS and AKS configurations.
• Required Permissions for Kubernetes: RBAC permissions required to install and operate the SystemLink Admin and SystemLink Helm charts.
• Required Storage Infrastructure: External storage requirements: MongoDB, PostgreSQL, and object storage (Amazon S3 or Azure Blob Storage).
• Networks and TLS: Virtual network configuration, DNS, ingress controllers, load balancers, TLS certificates, and firewall rules.
• Identity and Access Management: Configuring an OpenID Connect (OIDC) provider, required claims, and initial system administrator assignment.
• Configuring SystemLink Repositories: Authenticating with NI's artifact repository and mirroring it for air-gapped or restricted environments.

• Installing SystemLink Enterprise: End-to-end Helm-based installation procedure, covering namespace setup, secrets, and the required configuration files.

• Observing a SystemLink Enterprise Environment: OpenTelemetry-based observability architecture for traces, metrics, and logs, with guidance on connecting to Grafana Cloud and other backends.

• Updating SystemLink Enterprise: Helm upgrade procedure for configuration changes and version upgrades, including RabbitMQ compatibility checks.
• Backing Up SystemLink Enterprise: Coordinated backup procedures for all data stores (PostgreSQL, MongoDB, object storage, Kubernetes).
• Restoring SystemLink Enterprise: Procedures for restoring data stores or recovering from a complete cluster loss.
• Uninstalling SystemLink Enterprise: Removing the Helm releases and cleaning up persistent volume claims.