Installation Guide

Copyright © 2026 by Symetry, Inc. 14 Pine Street, Ste 6 Morristown, NJ 07960 All Rights Reserved

Introduction

SymetryML is delivered as a Docker image with all dependencies pre-configured, including the application server, Redis, native math libraries, and Spark support. This guide describes how to install, update, and configure SymetryML. For additional information, refer to the following documents:

Prerequisites

Before installing SymetryML, ensure the following are in place:

  • Docker Engine installed on the host machine.

  • SymetryML license file (sym.lic) provided by Symetry.

  • (Optional) NVIDIA Container Toolkit if using GPU or Multi-GPU projects — see the GPU Installation Guide.

  • (Optional) External Spark 4.1.0 cluster — see the Spark Installation Guide.

Pulling the Docker Image

SymetryML is hosted on Amazon ECR. To pull the image, first authenticate with the registry, then pull.

Step 1 — Authenticate with ECR

SymetryML will provide you with a 12 hours valid token that you can assign to an environment variable (ZTOKEN) and then login to the SymetryML Elastic Container Registry (ECR) with the following command:

Step 2 — Pull the image

Running SymetryML

The recommended way to run SymetryML is with Docker Compose. Create a docker-compose.yml file:

Start SymetryML:

Ports

Port
Protocol
Description

8080

HTTP

Web UI and REST API

8443

HTTPS

Secure access

GPU Support

To enable GPU acceleration, add the NVIDIA runtime and GPU environment variables:

See the GPU Installation Guide for additional details.

Redis

Redis is bundled inside the Docker image and starts automatically. To use an external Redis instance instead, update the SML_RTLM_DB_REDIS_HOST and SML_RTLM_DB_REDIS_PORT environment variables to point to your external Redis server.

Configuration

Customizing Configuration Files

SymetryML uses two configuration files that control REST API and Web UI behavior:

To override the default configuration, mount custom files into the container:

SymetryML Memory Requirements

Please consult the SymetryML Technical Requirements for more information on memory requirements for various project sizes. Note that with SymetryML, project sizes are limited by the number of attributes, not the number of rows.

Memory is configured via the JAVA_OPTS environment variable. Adjust -Xms (minimum heap) and -Xmx (maximum heap) according to your project size:

SymetryML REST Configuration

SymetryML REST behavior is controlled by the symetry-rest.txt configuration file. The following table provides information about available parameters.

Parameter
Description

jobreaper.run.period

Controls how often the 'thread reaper' runs. The thread reaper removes finished jobs from the job queue. Normally, a job is removed after a REST call is made to inquire about a job's status. If this call never comes, the job reaper ensures that the queue does not grow too large.

jobreaper.job.expiration

Expiration time for a job to be removed from the list of jobs after it is finished. That is removed by the JobReaper mentioned above.

request.signature.timeout

Reserved for internal use.

rtlm.option.assessment.limit.size

The maximum number of lines to read from a datasource during a model assessment. Default: 1000000

rtlm.option.azure.blob.inputstream.chunk.size.max.bytes

When using Azure Blob storage datasource, this is the chuck size used when downloading the files. Default is 4194304.

rtlm.option.emr.listener.host

IP address to use when receiving results from EMR job.

rtlm.option.job.scheduler.fixed.thread.max.pool.size

Number of jobs that can run in parallel. Setting this number too high might cause contention problems on the computer running SymetryML and might cause Jetty to become unresponsive. Recommended values: 1 or 2.

rtlm.option.rtlm.core.max

Maximum number of CPU cores to use when updating a Symetry Project with data. This number cannot be higher than the number authorized in your SymetryML license.

rtlm.option.rtlm.db.redis

Specifies whether to use redis. 0 = disables persistence altogether.

rtlm.option.rtlm.db.redis.host

Hostname of the redis server. Normally, this is localhost and was never tested otherwise.

rtlm.option.rtlm.db.redis.master.name

Reserved for internal use.

rtlm.option.rtlm.db.redis.port

Redis port (default: 6379).

rtlm.option.rtlm.db.redis.sentinel

Reserved for internal use.

rtlm.option.rtlm.db.redis.sentinel.host

Reserved for internal use.

rtlm.option.rtlm.db.redis.sentinel.port

Reserved for internal use.

rtlm.option.rtlm.gpu.matrix.minsize

Minimum matrix size to use GPU. Matrix is used when SymetryML builds models.

rtlm.option.rtlm.gpu.update.minsize

Minimum size to use GPU to update SymetryML project.

rtlm.option.rtlm.mgpu.runon.one

Enabling that specifies that a MultiGPU project can run on a server with only 1 GPU. '1' enables and '0' disables. Default: '0'

rtlm.option.rtlm.mgpu.num.gpus

The maximum number of GPUs that can be used on a server in a MultiGPU project.

rtlm.option.rtlm.model.mc.maxinfo

Maximum target count or transition size in a Markov Chain or Hidden Markov Model. Default: 512

rtlm.option.sml.autoselect.num.threads

The number of worker threads to use during Auto Select. Default: 8

rtlm.option.sml.batch.predict.limit.size

The maximum number of lines that can be read in a batch prediction. Default: 1000000

rtlm.option.sml.date.server.timeout

The maximum time in ms allowed for fetching the current time from the date server during licence verification. Default: 10000

rtlm.option.sml.default.rcond.threshold

The reciprocal condition number tolerance in matrix inverse operations. Default: 1e-14

rtlm.option.sml.density.num.threads

Control the number of threads that perform density computation

rtlm.option.sml.disable_bet.update

Enabling for the disabling of updates to the BET. '1' enables and '0' disables. Default: '0'

rtlm.option.sml.explore.double.format

Control the formatting of result returned by the Exploration API. Default value is %.4f

rtlm.option.sml.fed.admin.token.default.timeout.hours

The default number of hours that federation token are valid, that is the number of hours that a user has to join a federation once the admin generate their encrypted federation information. Default is 2 hours

rtlm.option.sml.fed.admin.trust_all_certs

This option should be used with caution. It will allows one to join a federation setup by an admin node for which its https certificate is not to be trusted. For mode details please consult the Federated Learning section from the REST API reference at the following url: SML_REST_API_Reference_Guide

rtlm.option.sml.fed.strict.mode

Enabling for strict mode, which prevents Federated projects from using a Random Forest or Kaplan Meier model. '1' enables and '0' disables. Default: '0'

rtlm.option.sml.fed.thread.pool.size

internal

rtlm.option.sml.fusion.prefetch.min.time.ms

Minimum time to wait between Fusion cells prefetch.

rtlm.option.sml.matrix.allow.non.native

1 to allow. 0 to block. Default is 0. This control whether or not SymetryML will allow the software to run without the optimized 'native' library. By default if SymetryML cannot load those native libraries it won't be able to build models.

rtlm.option.sml.mgpubet.persistence.dir

The directory to store the persisted MultiGPU project file into. Default: '/tmp'

rtlm.option.sml.mgpubet.persistence.suffix

The suffix to identify the persisted MultiGPU project file. Default: '-BET'

rtlm.option.sml.mgpubet.persistence.file-ext

The file extension of the persisted MultiGPU project file. Default: '.bet.gz'

rtlm.option.sml.power.prefix

Default is pt_

rtlm.option.sml.power.separator

Default is ^

rtlm.option.sml.spark.core.max

Maximum number of CPU cores to use in a job on a Spark cluster.

rtlm.option.sml.spark.so.send

Spark Cluster driver socket configuration. For details, refer to the linux socket documentation.

rtlm.option.sml.spark.so.rcv

Spark Cluster driver socket configuration. For details, refer to the linux socket documentation.

rtlm.option.sml.streams.error_on_df_change

Whether or not to throw an error when the schema of stream change as new data arrive. Default is 0 for false.

rtlm.option.sml.streams.processor.num.threads

Number of threads to use to process SML Streams. Default is 4.

rtlm.option.sml.streams.processor.sleep.time.ms.empty

Time in millisecs to sleep when there are no activity on a Stream Processor. Default is 5000, (5 secs).

rtlm.option.sml.streams.processor.sleep.time.ms.with_record

Time in millisecs to sleep when there are activity on a Stream Processor. Default is 0 millisecs.

rtlm.option.sml.task.max

Maximum number of task running at the same time. For now only affect how many SymetryML Kafka stream application that can be launched by the server.

rtlm.option.sml.user.projects.max

Maximum number of project allowed

rtlm.option.sml.user.datasources.load.max

Maximum number of data sources, default is 1000.

rtlm.option.sml.version.key

Reserved for internal use. Do not change.

rtlm.option.sml.version.host

Reserved for internal use. Do not change.

rtlm.option.spark.automl.sample.random.seed

Seed for AutoML with Spark. Used for seeding the randomizer used to sample the data used for the autom warmup dataset. Default is 42.

rtlm.option.spark.job.process.jvm.heap.size.min

rtlm.option.spark.job.process.jvm.heap.size.max

Default is 4096m

rtlm.option.spark.job.process.jvm.heap.size.min

Default is 32g

rtlm.option.spark.listener.host

IP address to use when the Spark Cluster sends results.

rtlm.option.vfs.http.connection.timeout

HTTP connection timeout in ms for HTTP datasources. Default: 30000

rtlm.option.vfs.http.so.timeout

HTTP socket timeout in ms for HTTP datasources. Default: 30000

SymetryML Web Configurations

Certain SymetryML Web parameters can be configured by editing the symetry-web.txt configuration file.

Parameter
Description

sml.web.legal.notice

Set to false to hide the legal notice during login

sym.web.auto.logoff.enable

Set to false disable auto logoff

sym.web.auto.logoff.time

Auto logoff time in minutes

Updating SymetryML

To update SymetryML, pull the new image version and recreate the container:

Update the image tag in your docker-compose.yml, then restart:

Troubleshooting

Question: I am getting the following error: java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target

Answer: The host does not have a valid SSL certificate. If you know you can trust this server you can bypass this by setting sml.fed.admin.trust_all_certs=1 in the symetry-rest.txt configuration file. See the SymetryML REST Configuration section for details.

Last updated