Is there a document the lists the minimum hardware requirements of the reporting server? We are in the process of ordering new hardware and would like to know what is the impact if we purchase 2 x 3GHz CPU vs 1 x 3 Ghz CPU, 2 GB RAM vs 1 GB RAM, 2 x 36 GB disks vs 1 x 36 GB disk (besides the obvious)? Thank you very much for your input.

Well we currently have the WebFocus Reporting Server running on a P3 450MHZ machine with 612SDRAM... Its running and doing its job but needless to say we're in the middle of upgrading it now.

I couldn't tell you the difference 1gig vs 2 gigs of RAM would do.. but I would certainly suggest having multiple harddrives raid'd together. To increase both performance and reliability incase a hard drive fails.

As for the CPU's... guess that depends on the number of requests your handling at one particular moment.. I could be wrong but I don't think you would see a great performance increase if your mainly handling 1-3 simultaneous requests.

Leo

Thanks for your quick reply Leo. In our location, it is possible to have 50+ concurrent users. Can this be handled by 1 CPU?

I guess the disks would not be a problem since we are planning to do a raid 1.

oh please get at least 2 cpu's. That is a HUGE difference.
and raid drives of course.
but 2cpu's is huge.
you have to be licensed for >1 cpu, tho

If budget is not an issue then the simple answer is always, Bigger is better.

Mainly though it depends on how many simultaneous requests you expect to have and whether they are running a lot of Graph outputs (The java based graph engine starts an extra process).

The installation Manual states
�The memory requirements for installation and operation of the server are:
� Workspace memory: 12 megabytes.
� Memory per active agent: 10 megabytes.
These numbers apply when the server is in an idle state, so they may fluctuate slightly.�
Personally I always look at an average 20 meg per user to be safe

Remember any figures that you arrive at have to be added to the base system requirements.

That means:-
Operating system requirements + any other requirements for DBMS�s and other applications that are normally running on the system.

When I spec a Windows system for customers for a production machine I would suggest a two processor system with a minimum of 2 gig of ram for up to 100 users.

If it�s a dedicated WebFocus server then disk�s are not quite so important although SCSI is best (the newer high performance SATA drives are not bad either). Go for two disks
Drive C: as a system disk and drive D: as the application disc.
Yes, Raid can be of value but from a performance point of view only raid zero delivers that. You do not get any reliability improvements as there is no mirroring but mirroring adds a performance hit.

Look at http://www.acnc.com/raid.html

For a pure application server that is not holding volatile data I would say raid 0 is better.

But the C:/D: would probably suit you better.

I'm no expert in raiding but my understanding is the performance hit would be writting to the drives and not reading information from the drives that are mirrored.

The setup we have is 3 drives that each drive backup half the information of another drive. Such that each drive would have 1/3 of information used, 1/3 backing up drive 1, 1/3 backing up drive2. Such that it can still read like RAID0 but write slower while ensuring the data isn't lost unless 2 drives fail at once. It will take a performance hit if 1 drive fails but works well with all drives functional. Of course the total size available will be equivalent to 1 drive but should increase performance.

This is how I thought it worked.. but I could very well be wrong.

Leo

JG,

Unfortunately, budget is a concern. If I tweak your recommendation to 1 CPU, 2 gigs RAM, where would the performance take a hit?

For everyone,

Can you quantify the effects of having 1 cpu instead of 2? Have you done any hardware upgrades that affected performance?

Any information is greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Dan

Dan, for me, the 2nd cpu was a night and day difference.
The difference between doing etl a few times a day and doing etl every hour. huge huge huge difference

LeoL, you�re absolutely correct the performance hit for raid 1 is in writing and not reading which is usually faster. But think of the scenario. for a dedicated WebFocus server most of what your doing is writing your extracted data to edatemp, not to much of an issue if you only have small optimized requests going against relational DB's, but when large volumes of data are going into focsort it can matter, but to be honest if it can be afforded mirrored raids are preferable because of the safety factor.

As to machine spec Memory is the first concern as it�s basically what controls the number of simultaneous users, However Susannah is absolutely correct the difference a second processor makes is amazing. WebFocus is not parallel processing and so an individual request does not benefit directly but 2 processors mean 1st multiple requests swapped in at the same time and 2nd system processes not having to wait for the processor to be free. However remember as Susannah mentioned if your current license is only for 1 CPU it�s going to cost you an upgrade fee.
The price difference between a 2 proc 2 gig ram machine and a 1 proc 1 gig ram machine is probably only about 1000 - 1200 $ (depending on your supplier). Probably going to end up costing 8 to 10k $ with the WebFocus upgrade.
I've done several hardware upgrades on both Windows and Unix based systems and they've all mainly been aimed at increasing a) performance and b) capacity. Memory first, then no. of processors has usually been the rule.

One think that you should look at first is how many reports you run and how often they run. How many report requests do you have running at the same time? Each report running requires its own agent to be running. Each agent runs as a separate service. I believe that if you have a 2 CPU system and 2 reports (agents) running they will each process on separte CPU's.
I looked and we process from 500 to 1000 report request a day. When I looked at the internet log I found out that the requests were spread out through the day and vary rarely were there more than 1 report running at any given time. Maybe 10 times a day were their 2 requests running at the same time. Most of our reports request run from 2 to 30 seconds.

We have our report server configured with 2 pre-started agents with a max of 10.

Lenny

Thanks for all your suggestions/comments/insights. I really appreciate it. We'll gather our thoughts and present it to management. You have been a great help.