[acs] Move ePortal to dedicated server

[mounters]

We are currently running Facility, SQL & ePortal on the same VM and have been advised by Serco Support to move ePortal to a dedicated VM to help with performance issues. Does anyone know if we can get the new instance of ePortal built and configured whilst users are still running on the old one and then just get them to move to the new ePortal server when we're ready? We would then schedule in the necessary downtime to uninstall ePortal from the original server when we're happy.

 

Thanks

[beagle]

hiya

We used to have this setup when we had physical servers

But when we virtualised we asked Link2ICT to build CMIS for us rather than taking virtualising the physical machine and they insisted on a single server setup.

We struggled for about 6 weeks with 32GB RAM and 1 processor, but it improved with second processor

During the 6 weeks we wantd to go back but performance is okay now on single server setup.

[michael2k6]

Hi Mounters,

 

You can connect as many ePortal servers to the same database as you see fit, so it's perfectly fine to keep up the old box running and install on a new box, then just point the users at the new one when you're ready. Please bear in mind that a big performance hit with the database in VM environments is the disk queue due to images being hosted on SAN's then the SQL data is stored within that image. The only time I've seen VM environments running at the same performance as a physical where SQL is involved is where people have had massive EMC SANs made up of 15k SAS drives, and where the VM images have been hosted on a seperate RAID to the SQL data. People having performance issues in that setup have put dedicated RAID's into a host and mounted them as a storage array in the VM, and moved the MDF and LDF to that drive. ePortal is made up of DataServer and Facility ePortal, each of which can use a maximum of 2gb of RAM and 1 core of a processor each. So If you have a machine with ePortal only on there, 2 fast cores are better than 4 slow ones... though 4 fast ones are better so that there's 2 left for the OS and anything else (though they will be under utilised).

 

Mic

 

The above post is my own and not the opinion of my employer or their associates.

 

ePortal uses hardly any disk (in both capacity and usage) so clock speed and RAM are most important. Ideally, you'd have atleast a dual core, probably quad, for the SQL backend and 4 - 8gb of RAM depending on your OS, and on the ePortal box, you'd have 4 - 6gb of RAM and 2 - 4 cores again. If you're putting it all on the same box, then you want 8gb - 12gb of RAM, and 8 cores, 2 for the OS, 2 for ePortal and the rest for SQL (2 for SQL would be enough so if going for a single hexacore rather than 2 quad cores, that's fine, but bear in mind that clock speed is king as each ePortal service can only utilise one core each).

[mounters]

Thanks for that info Mic, it was what I thought but always best to check these things out first!

 

Disk access shouldn't really be a problem as we're running it from 3*HP P4000 15K SAS boxes and a sister school in our fondation is running on the same platform with no perfomance issues.

[michael2k6]

Ok, sound, post back and let us know how it goes.