OTRS can be installed on many different operating systems. OTRS can run on linux and on other unix derivates (e.g. OpenBSD or FreeBSD). You can also deploy it on Microsoft Windows. OTRS does not have excessive hardware requirements. We recommend using a machine with at least a 2 GHz Xeon or comparable CPU, 2 GB RAM and a 160 GB hard drive for a small setup.
To run OTRS you'll also need to use a web server and a database server. Apart from that, on the OTRS machine, you should install perl and/or install some additional perl modules. The web server and Perl have to be installed on the same machine as OTRS. The database back-end can be installed locally or on another host.
For the web server we recommend using the Apache HTTP Server, because its module mod_perl improves greatly the performance of OTRS. Apart from that, OTRS should run on any web server that can execute Perl scripts.
You can deploy OTRS on different databases. You can choose between MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, or Microsoft SQL Server. If you use MySQL you have the advantage that the database and some system settings can be configured during the installation, through a web front-end.
For Perl, we recommend using at least version 5.8.8. You need some additional modules which can be installed either with the Perl shell and CPAN or via the package manager of your operating system (rpm, yast, apt-get).
Software requirements
Apache2 + mod_perl2 or higher (recommended, mod_perl is really fast!)
Webserver with CGI support (CGI is not recommended)
Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) 6 or higher
MySQL 4.1 or higher
PostgreSQL 7.0 or higher (8.2 or higher recommended)
Oracle 10g or higher
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or higher
The section in the manual about installation of Perl modules describes in more detail how you can set up those which are needed for OTRS.
If you install a binary package of OTRS, which was built for your operating system (rpm, Windows-Installer), either the package contains all Perl modules needed or the package manager of your system should take care of the dependencies of the Perl modules needed.
For the Agent interface of OTRS, you'll be OK if you use a modern browser with JavaScript support enabled. We support the following browsers:
Internet Explorer 8.0 or higher
Mozilla Firefox 3.6 or higher
Google Chrome
Opera 10 or higher
Safari 4 or higher
We recommend to always use the latest version of your browser, because it has the best JavaScript and rendering performance. Dramatical performance varieties between the used browsers can occur with big data or big systems. We are happy to consult you on that matter.
For the OTRS Customer Interface, in addition to the browsers listed above, you can also use Internet Explorer versions 6 or 7, and we do not require JavaScript either.