What are the database requirements?

General database requirements

CAST Imaging requires an RDBMS to store both the data generated during analyses and persistence data (settings/properties etc.). CAST supports only PostgreSQL as follows:

CAST Storage Service - a PostgreSQL instance packaged and provided by CAST for installation on Microsoft Windows with its own custom installer and pre-configured settings.

or:

an official and supported (by CAST) PostgreSQL release installed direct on a Linux machine, or through Docker via Linux.

Note that PostgreSQL installed on Linux has consistently proven to provide better performance than CAST Storage Service installed on Microsoft Windows and therefore CAST recommends this configuration where possible.

An official and supported (by CAST) PostgreSQL release installed direct on a Linux machine, or through Docker via Linux.

Note that when installing CAST Imaging on Linux via Docker, CAST provides a database instance as a Docker image (see below for details). By default, this instance will be used by CAST Imaging for both analysis data and persistence data storage needs. However, you are free to install additional database instances in whatever configuration you require, for example to separate the storage of persistence data and analysis data on two separate instances.

Requirements for analysis data

Three schemas will be created automatically in a database of your choice (postgres by default) for each application you onboard in CAST Imaging:

<application_name>_local
<application_name>_central
<application_name>_mngt

An additional schema will be created automatically in a database of your choice (postgres by default) if you are using the CAST Health/Management Dashboard, where results for all applications are consolidated together:

general_measure (or other custom name)

Requirements for persistence data

A database for authentication persistence data is required (keycloak_v3 by default but the name can be customized) and will be created automatically during the installation - if this database already exists it will be re-used and this may cause unexpected behaviour
Two schemas called admin_center and analysis_node will be created automatically in the database of your choice (postgres by default) during the installation - if these schemas already exist they will be re-used and this may cause unexpected behaviour

Supported RDBMS releases

CAST Storage Service

You can download this component here and you can find out more information about how to install and configure it here. Supported releases are listed below:

Release	Bundled PostgreSQL release	Architecture	Default port no.
4.13.x	13.x	64bit	2284

PostgreSQL

CAST does not provide an installer for Linux Operating Systems or Docker, however, you can install an official PostgreSQL release as listed in the table below on a 64bit Linux Operating System (supported by PostgreSQL) and use it as a storage host for CAST Imaging.

PostgreSQL release	Architecture	Notes
15.x	64bit	CAST provides a database instance (v. 15.11) as a Docker image when installing CAST Imaging on Linux via Docker.
14.x	64bit
13.x	64bit

See here for more information about how to install and configure an instance direct on Linux, or here for more information about how to install an official PostgreSQL image on Docker.