Virtualization of Servers

[Ryan_Nagy]

Hey all,

We are pretty new to the whole OnBase ecosystem here and we are placing our first larger bid. I am tasked with specing out the appropriate hardware and looking for a little guidance on what to virtualize and not virtualize. It looks like we are going to be needing an App, Web, Unity(separate from web?), Autonomy, and DB servers. I am looking at roughly 80 concurrent users. To my understanding the autonomy should be a physical box which is fine, but the rest I am still hazy on. Should I look at keeping the application server physical as well? Database? Going off the white papers it would appear the answer is yes to those, but I am curious to hear about some real world experience on this... 

Is there some other place I should be looking at for this info? 

Thanks,

Ryan

[Anthony_Boyd]

We have been using VMware for all of our servers for a little over 5 years now and it's working great.  Our database is a little over 1TB and we are running SQL Server 2012 with 8CPUs and 40GB RAM in a VM environment.  All of our web/app/workflow timers/dip/cold/edi are in VM as well.  We did have all of our diskgroups on file servers setup as VMs until recently but due to the size (10tb+) we moved them onto a EMC Isilon NAS to make it easier to maintain.  We have about 800 users and will be adding a few thousand over the next year when we are 100% live on Epic. 

The key with any virtualization setup is the infrastructure that is driving it.  We had a few bumps early in mainly around database performance since we were on shared storage with limited resources but as our VM infrastructure has expanded those issues have been worked out. 

Hope this helps

Anthony

[Ryan_Evoniuk]

Hey Ryan,

80 concurrent users isn't a huge deployment going by user count. Depending on what the majority of those users will be performing (basic import and retrieval vs. complex workflows and 3rd party integrations), you can host most of the services on 1 VM or physical server. Performance should be satisfactory as long as the computing resources and network bandwidth are sufficient. We host the Application Server (Unity Client will use AppServer), Web Server, disk groups (DAS via PowerVault), Thick Client share, and workflow timers on 1 robust physical server with 150~ concurrent users and the overall resource usage averages less than 5%. We use a separate processing server (basically a power workstation) for COLD, DIP, and other process intensive tasks. The database is also hosted on a separate server dedicated to SQL Server instances.

I believe I've seen a document with more detailed information on specing and building a new OnBase deployment, but I can't seem to find it on the site. Maybe someone else (e.g. Hyland) can point you in the right direction for that. Good luck.

[Sheila_Shaver]

Ryan,

I have approx. 400 users (50 concurrent).  I am totally virtual.  Currently using OnBase 12.0.2.609 / 12.0.2.173 and IDOL version 12.0.2.205...  My database is on a virtual server dedicated for SQL Databases.  I have a separate Web Server.  My files are in a SAN environment.  My IDOL Server is the "biggie".  Through much trouble-shooting over the past 2 months, I finally got things working smoothly.  The newer IDOL is a CPU "hog".  Just for IDOL - my virtual host is a physical server with dual hex-cores.  The IDOL server is Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard using 1 socket (or 6-cores).  So his setup is:   (1) 6-core Intel® Xeon® CPU’s – E5645 @ 2.40GHz and 12GB RAM.  When processing, I still manage to max at 100% CPU, but haven't went past 50% for Physical Memory.  I am currently in the process of creating a brand new environment with all my servers being Server 2012 and splitting my Web Server out to also having a separate dedicated "Process" Server for all of my Services and Workflow.  Good luck!