Complete Guide to Cloud Version Control

The Enhanced Studio Pack contains everything you need to get started in a simple, pre-configured environment. It includes three Perforce products.

• Helix Core version control — This is deployed with SDP built-in best practices.
• Hansoft project management.
• Helix Swarm code review. 

You also can deploy the Windows Workstation that have clients pre-configured to connect to your new instance.

The Enhanced Studio Pack also has a “production-ready” deployment with:

• Networking.
• User roles and groups.
• Sensible defaults.

It is recommended that you already have an AWS (Amazon Web Services) or Azure (Microsoft Azure account before launching these products.

The SDP is the Server Deployment Package, recommended by Perforce consultants. This helps provide you with a production-level quality installation of Helix Core (P4D). For more information:

• Review the guide.
• Check out the code.

AWS
If your AWS deployment fails, it is usually caused by a G series type instance limit in your AWS quota.

To fix this, go into the AWS console. Navigate to Service Quotas > AWS services > and search for “Running On-Demand G and VT instances.” Select the Applied Quota value line item and then click “Request quota increase.”

Azure 
If you see an error message like the following:

“QuotaExceeded: Operation could not be completed as it results in exceeding approved Total Regional Cores quota. Additional details - Deployment Model: Resource Manager, Location: eastus, Current Limit: 10,...Current Usage: 8, Additional Required: 6, (Minimum) New Limit Required: 14. Submit a request for Quota increase”

Follow the link in the error message to submit a limit increase. 

Yes, that is an option, but consider the following:

1. How much available storage do you have?
2. Do you have enough storage to scale?
3. How will network connectivity work? 
   • Does anybody work from home?
   • If you are going to port forward at your router is your ISP upload/download sufficient to support remote workers?
4. How are you going to handle backups?
5. When you get out of startup mode how will you handle the migration to a proper Helix Core server?

To SSH into your instance via the command-line:

ssh -i .ssh/your-cloud-key rocky@Your-IP-Address 

Your-IP-Address will be replaced with the output of:

• AWS - P4CommitPublicIP
• Azure - P4CommitInstanceID

For more information:

AWS DOCUMENTATION

AZURE DOCUMENTATION 

The username is: "rocky"

For more information:

AWS DOCUMENTATION

AZURE DOCUMENTATION 

To access the administrative tools, you can:

• Download P4 Admin.
• Via the command-line, SSH to your Helix Core instance and use the p4 CLI that is pre-installed and configured. 

To switch to the perforce user, use these commands:

ssh -i .ssh/your-cloud-key rocky@your IP address 
sudo su - perforce
p4login -v 1 

At this point, you will be the perforce user and be logged into Helix Core. You will have all the p4 administrative binaries in your $PATH.
 

There is no password set for the perforce user.  To gain access to the perforce user see section “After I SSH into the Helix Core instance, how do I log in to Helix Core?”

The "server" field is the combination of ssl:<<IP address of Helix Core server>>:<< Helix Core Port >>

For example, "ssl:54.23.45.67:1666" 

Review your outputs here:

• AWS Output
• Azure Output 

Open firewall rules to allow your IP.

• AWS: https://www.perforce.com/products/helix-core/install-enhanced-studio-pack-aws#tab-panel-61566
• Azure: https://www.perforce.com/products/helix-core/install-enhanced-studio-pack-azure#tab-panel-61546

Ensure p4 service has started.

• sudo systemctl start p4d_1

Ensure logs are not showing errors.

• sudo systemctl status p4d_1
• Logs live in: /p4/1/logs
• You can tail the logs like so: tail -f -n 1000 /p4/1/logs/log
   

If you see the following message in P4V while trying to log into Helix Core, you are getting a connection timeout:

WSAETIMEOUT, A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.

Start by double checking the firewall rules of the Helix Core instance. 

AWS Instructions

1. Log into the AWS Console.
2. Search for “EC2” in the top search bar.
3. Find your Helix Core EC2 in the list and select it.
4. Click the “Security” tab.
5. Go to whatismyipaddress.com to verify your current public IPv4 address.
6. Compare the IPv4 address from step #5 to the IPv4 address found the “Source” column.

If the IP4v addresses are different, click on the Security Group link to edit your rules.

Azure Instructions 

1. Log into the Azure portal.
2. Search for “Virtual Machines” in the top search bar.
3. Find your Helix Core virtual machine in the list and select it.
4. Click on “Networking” in the left hand menu bar.
5. Go to whatismyipaddress.com to verify your current public IPv4 address.
6. Compare the IPv4 address from step #5 to the IPv4 address found in the “Source” column.

If the IPv4 addresses are different, click on each rule to update the source address.

Nope! The Enhanced Studio Pack is free. But there are limits for each product:

• Helix Core
  • Unlimited number of files for 5 users and 20 client workspaces, or
  • Unlimited number of users and workspaces for up to 1,000 files.
  • Helix Swarm code review is free with Helix Core.
• Hansoft
  • 5 free users for 1 year.

Learn more about licensing >> 

No. Helix Core and Hansoft licenses cannot be included in your cloud billing. 

Install the license.txt into the P4ROOT directory, by default it is /p4/1/root/
For more information, check out our documentation. 

Check out our documentation. 

To manage users, you can use P4 Admin or the command-line. Check out documentation to learn how.

• P4 Admin
• P4 CLI

There are two types of depots available in Helix Core. A streams depot allows your team to leverage Perforce Streams to guide development changes.

• Create a streams depot.
• Create a regular depot.

Before you contact support…

Please provide any deployment errors:

• How to find them on Azure.
• How to find them on AWS.