Hyku Product Beta - Frequently Asked Questions
Who can participate in the Beta Test?
The Beta Test is open to anyone who is interested in testing the deployment of the Hyku application and its functionality as a digital repository. You do not need to be an active Hydra developer or user to get involved and provide feedback. Organizations experienced with Hydra applications are also strongly encouraged to participate, too.
Why participate?
We can think of at least four reasons to participate in the Beta Test:
- It's fun to try out stuff for the first time
- It's fun to be among the first users of a new product
- You can help steer the direction of Hyku, because your feedback will be considered future product releases
- It's a community good: you can help make the product better for us all!
What is expected of participants?
Participants are expected to:
- Register your interest in participating in the Beta Test
- Install Hyku via at least one of three methods:
- Use the Hyku application
- Contact the Hyku technical team along the way with questions, ideas, bug reports, and overall feedback.
When does the Beta Test take place?
The formal Hyku Beta Test is planned for May 15-June 23, 2017.
What documentation is available?
Documentation for Hyku is a work in progress. More and more will be added to this wiki as we roll out the product in early-mid 2017. Here are links to existing documentation about Hyku and Hyrax that is useful and relevant in the meantime:
- Hyku and Hyrax: How are they related and how are they different?
- Hyku
- Detailed Feature List
- Getting Started - in progress
- Docker help - https://github.com/projecthydra-labs/hyku/wiki/Hyku-on-Docker#how-do-i-set-up-dns-for-multiple-tenants
- Hyrax
- "What are Admin Sets?" and definitions of other key terms. Part of the Hyrax Developer Knowledge Base now under development.
- Hyrax UI Interaction Descriptions - describes a variety of typical user workflows in Hyrax, the Rails engine underlying Hyku.
- Administrative Sets and Workflow in Hyrax - technical documentation about the definition and implementation of workflow and administrative sets
What AWS resources are necessary to test Hyku in the cloud?
A set of AWS CloudFormation templates are available which can be used to build a test Hyku application environment. These templates create many AWS resources, so there is cost involved in creating and running this stack. The table below includes the AWS resources which are likely to have the most impact on overall cost. Some of the resources not included here are those in Route53, SQS, Codepipeline, and SES, as their costs are likely to be minimal in a short-term testing environment. The total indicated is for running the stack for 1 month. If the resources are used for less than 1 month, the price will be proportionally lower. Such is the benefit of cloud computing.
Please NOTE: These estimates are intended to indicate the minimum cost for running a Hyku stack for testing purposes. This configuration is NOT recommended for production deployments.
| Component using resource | AWS resource | Count | OnDemand Price | OnDemand Total (Monthly) |
| Hyku app (1), Fedora (1), Solr (3) | EC2 t2.large | 5 | 0.094 | 343.1 |
| Worker | EC2 t2.medium | 1 | 0.047 | 34.31 |
| Zookeeper | EC2 t2.micro | 3 | 0.012 | 26.28 |
| VPC bastion | EC2 t2.nano | 1 | 0.0059 | 4.307 |
| Shared (all) | EC2 NAT gateway | 1 | 0.045 | 32.85 |
| Hyku app, Fedora, Solr, Zookeeper | EC2 load balancer | 4 | 0.025 | 73 |
| Hyku app, Fedora, Workers, Bastion | EBS (8 GB per instance) | 32 | 0.1 | 3.2 |
| Solr, Zookeeper | EBS (30 GB per instance) | 180 | 0.1 | 18 |
| Database (Hyku, Fedora) | RDS PostgeSQL db.t2.medium, multi-AZ | 2 | 0.146 | 213.16 |
| Redis | Elasticache small cache node | 1 | 0.034 | 24.82 |
| Fedora | S3 | 100 | 0.023 | 2.3 |
| Shared (all) | Data transfer out | 50 | 0.09 | 4.5 |
| Total | $779.827 |
How is the Product Beta Test related to the HykuDirect hosted service pilot?
The project team is available for questions throughout the test period. Check out the Communications and Support page for info about the various channels for contacting us, including the weekly virtual office hours. Since it is a Beta test, we expect to uncover bugs and holes in the documentation. The project team is looking forward to answer questions as they come up, but it is unlikely we will be able to address the issues immediately.
The Hyku Beta Test is an open opportunity for the community to deploy and try out the software as we get ready to release the first version of the application. The test will run through June 23, 2017.
At the same time, the Hydra-in-a-Box team is partnering with a small group of selected institutions to pilot a hosted service – called HykuDirect -- run by DuraSpace. The first pilots will begin in late May and run through the summer.
Both the Beta Test and the HykuDirect service pilot provide similar opportunities. For potential adopters, it is a chance to see how Hyku works and to offer feedback. For the project team, these tests help us to make a better product and offer better services as well as to gauge and promote interest in the repository, effectively stimulating growth in the Hydra community.
Where is more information about Hydra-in-a-Box and Hyku?
Visit the Hydra-in-a-Box website which features an FAQ of its own, a blog, and links to more project documentation.
A website for HykuDirect is now in planning and will be released in June.