Configure hosts

You must configure the operating system on each host before installing Speech Suite. The requirements for each host depend on which Speech Suite services you run, the volume and processing load of calls to those services. See Required hardware and memory.

Note: Nuance recommends explicitly configuring the date and time of all host machines in the network. Having all hosts use a common date and time simplifies log collection, licensing, troubleshooting, and comparing logs.

  1. Confirm the DNS and hostname:

    > hostname (returns the hostname)

    > hostname -f (returns the fully qualified hostname)

    > hostname -i (returns the IP address)

  2. Required for distributed deployments. On all servers, modify the hosts file to equate the host's IP address to its short name and full name.

    Hosts file: /etc/hosts
    Syntax format: IP-address short-name full-name

  3. Confirm the host's timezone is correctly set. All timezones are allowed. If using the Management Station, do not change the timezone of the Management Station host after the installation.

  4. Disable the firewall. Before re-enabling the firewall (post-installation), see Virus protection, firewalls, and performance.
  5. Remove the mariadb-libs package. (This is only required if using Management Station. It prevents conflicts when installing MySQL.)
    > yum remove mariadb-libs
  6. If using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x, ensure you have access to all packages from the Optional channel. Do either of the following:
    • Enable the Optional channel in the host's RHEL subscription.
    • Enter the following command (which requires a licensed copy of RHEL) on your host to include the necessary repository. 

      > yum-config-manager --enable rhel-7-server-optional-rpms

  7. Ensure that all required packages are installed with the following commands. (There is no harm entering these commands even if the specified packages are already installed. You can ignore packages that fail to install.)

    Use this command on Amazon Linux 2 hosts:

    > yum install perl-Data-Dumper system-lsb-core-4.1-27.amzn2.3.6.x86_64 glibc.x86_64 glibc.i686 compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.x86_64 libstdc++.i686 openssl libgcc libgcc.i686 libaio.x86_64 libaio.i686 ncurses-libs httpd.x86_64 unzip -x postfix -x mariadb-libs zlib.i686 zlib.x86_64

    Use this command on all other Linux hosts:

    > yum install perl-Data-Dumper redhat-lsb-core.x86_64 glibc.x86_64 glibc.i686 libstdc++.x86_64 libstdc++.i686 openssl libgcc libgcc.i686 libaio.x86_64 libaio.i686 libnsl.i686 ncurses-libs httpd.x86_64 unzip -x postfix -x mariadb-libs zlib.i686 zlib.x86_64

Linux hosts running Red Hat 8 require additional configuration. (Without this configuration, the Management Station and Dragon Voice engines will fail to start.)

  1. Create a symbolic link on every host:

    cd /usr/lib64
    ln -s libnsl.so.2 libnsl.so.1

  2. Execute this command:

    yum install fontconfig
  1. Install these libraries: 
    yum install initscripts
    yum install perl-Data-Dumper glibc.i686 libstdc++.x86_64 libstdc++.i686 openssl libgcc libgcc.i686 libaio.x86_64 libaio.i686 libnsl.i686 libnsl.x86_64 ncurses-libs httpd.x86_64 unzip -x postfix -x mariadb-libs zlib.i686 zlib.x86_64
    yum update
  2. Create a symbolic link:
ln -s /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 /lib64/ld-lsb-x86-64.so.3;
  • Before installing Nuance speech products on any drive (C: or D:), you must enable 8.3 naming format on that drive.
  • Disable the firewall capabilities. From the Control Panel, select Windows Firewall and click Off. Before re-enabling the firewall (post-installation), see Virus protection, firewalls, and performance.
  • Required for distributed deployments. On all servers, modify the hosts file to equate the host's IP address to its short name and full name.

    Hosts file: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
    Syntax format: IP-address short-name full-name

  • Confirm the host's timezone is correctly set. All timezones are allowed. If using the Management Station, do not change the timezone of the Management Station host after the installation.