System Requirements

Server Requirements and Preparations

Below are the hardware and software requirements for the CollectionSpace server. The power of your server has a greater effect on the system's performance than that of the client computers. Generally, the more memory and CPU you have available on your server, the better the CollectionSpace system performs.

Supported Operating Systems

We regularly build and test CollectionSpace servers in multiple Linux environments. We don't anticipate problems running CollectionSpace servers in other environments, but they have not been as extensively tested.

(There is currently one known issue running CollectionSpace on Mac OS X servers, CSPACE-4447.)

Successful Installations to Date

Operating systems on which the CollectionSpace server has been successfully installed and run to date include:

• Linux distributions:
  • Fedora release 10 (Cambridge)
  • Fedora release 11 (Leonidas)
  • Fedora release 12 (Constantine)
  • Fedora release 14 (Laughlin)
  • Fedora release 15 (Lovelock)
  • Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (Lenny)
  • Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 (Squeeze)
  • Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron)
  • Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)
  • Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat)
  • Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)
  • RHEL 5.0 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux)
• Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
• Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)
• Microsoft:
  • Windows XP, Service Pack 3 (SP3)
  • Windows 7

Note that many of the successful installations above were performed with earlier versions of the CollectionSpace server, running in the JBoss Application Server. Starting with release 2.0, the CollectionSpace server runs in Apache Tomcat; not all of the platforms above have been tested with the new server environment.

Table 1-1 Hardware Requirements Summary

Table 1-2 Software Requirements for Installation

The CollectionSpace system is offered under the terms of an open source ECL 2.0 License (https://source.collectionspace.org/collection-space/LICENSE.txt).

Server Machine Preparations

Prepare your server machine (UNIX or Windows) to run CollectionSpace components by following the next steps:

1. Install the required software described in Table 1-2 on the server machine. In particular, ensure that the PostgreSQL database system is installed and running. (For some instructions on installing this software under various operating systems, see the relevant guide in Installing CollectionSpace.)
2. Create a folder in which to download the CollectionSpace software.

After doing so, follow the instructions for installing the CollectionSpace server in the relevant installation guide in Installing CollectionSpace.

Client Recommendations

Since the client side of CollectionSpace is a standard web interface, the requirements for the client are relatively light. Clients need only a reasonably up-to-date web browser running on an operating system like Windows 7 or Mac OS X. Because the CollectionSpace front end runs in JavaScript within the browser, a faster computer with more memory will yield somewhat better performance.

Table 1-3 Client Software Recommendations

The CollectionSpace system is routinely tested with specific combinations of web browsers and operating systems, whose use is both recommended and supported:

This list is subject to change over time, as newer versions of browsers and operating systems are released. (Some users have also informally reported success using CollectionSpace with supported browsers under Mac OS X 10.7, various distributions of Linux, etc.)