There are two main options for installing NAV: Either from source code, or from a pre-packaged version. Some of these options will require manually installing and/or configuring 3rd party software that NAV depends on, mainly :xref:`PostgreSQL` and :xref:`Graphite`.
There are mainly two official types of "pre-packaged" NAV versions you can use:
- A virtual appliance.
- A Debian package.
We provide a virtual appliance in the Open Virtualization Format. Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is an open standard for packaging and distributing virtual appliances or, more generally, software to be run in virtual machines.
Our virtual appliance is based on Debian GNU/Linux and our published Debian Package, mentioned below. This appliance can be imported into virtualization software like e.g. Virtualbox or VMWare.
The appliance is useful for quickly evaluating the NAV software, without the hassle of installing and maintaining a full OS for the purpose. The appliance is, however, not necessarily suited for production use without modifications (such as increasing the storage space and other resources made available to the VM) or proper sysadmin practices.
There is a separate guide for installing the virtual appliance on the official NAV web site .
If you are familiar with the Debian GNU/Linux operating system, you can install NAV from a Debian Package. Debian is our primary choice of server operating system, so we always make sure to provide an official Debianized NAV package.
Using the Debian package will save you from the hassle of installing and upgrading either NAV or its dependencies from source code. You can even configure your Debian to automatically keep up-to-date with the latest security patches from the Debian team.
This is normally our recommended option for regular NAV users.
Instructions for installing the Debian package are available on the official NAV web site.
After installing the Debian package, you will need to :ref:`integrate Graphite with NAV <integrating-graphite-with-nav>`, before starting to use NAV to monitor your devices.
There is also a third, still experimental, way of installing a pre-packaged NAV: Docker Compose. Like with the Virtual Appliance, this offers a quick way to get started with NAV, without the up-front hassle of installing and configuring a full operating system for the purpose.
Using Docker Compose, NAV's components and dependencies will run in individual ready-to-use containers. You can run NAV directly from your workstation for evaluation, on a server with other containers, or more easily scale out to multiple servers, if need be.
The containerized version of NAV is available from a separate GitHub repository: https://github.com/Uninett/nav-container/
If you're the hacker type, or just want to run NAV on your own preferred choice of *NIX flavored operating system, you'll want to build and install NAV from source code.
For you, we provide two guides: