BEST PRACTICE SYSTEM SETUP FOR SPE PLATFORMS Product Snow License Manager Version 7.0 Content System requirements SQL Server configuration Maintenance Test environment Document date 2015-10-15
ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT This document describes the system setup for the server installations of Snow License Manager in a Service Provider Edition (SPE) platform with 100 000 registered client computers. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS These recommendations apply to the server hardware. For the client requirements, please refer to the document System Requirements for all Snow products. SERVER HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS This profile applies for: 100 000 inventoried client computers registered in the SPE platform SERVER SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENT Server 1 (physical or virtual) Server 2 (physical or virtual) Server 3 (physical or virtual) Snow License Manager Snow Inventory SQL Server X X X APPLICATION SERVER (SNOW LICENSE MANAGER) Component Operating system Processor Disk RAM Network card Required installed software Required server configuration Minimum requirements Microsoft Windows Server 2008 x64, 2008 R2, 2012, or 2012 R2 Single Xeon 2.0 GHz Quad Core or equivalent 100 GB free space minimum 24 GB or greater 100/1000 Mbit Ethernet Microsoft.NET Framework 3.5 Microsoft.NET Framework 4.5 The two roles Application server and Web server should be installed. The web role service Application Development should be installed, including ASP.NET functionality. The web role service Security should be installed, including Basic Authentication and Windows Authentication. To enable Snow Update Service to download software updates, HTTP(S) bidirectional communication needs to be allowed on port 80 or 443. Page 2 of 6
INVENTORY SERVER (SNOW INVENTORY) Component Operating system Processor Disk RAM Network card Required installed software Required server configuration Minimum requirements Microsoft Windows Server 2008 x64, 2008 R2, 2012, or 2012 R2 Single Xeon 2.0 GHz Quad Core or equivalent 100 GB free space minimum 24 GB or greater 100/1000 Mbit Ethernet Microsoft.NET Framework 3.5 Microsoft.NET Framework 4.5 The two roles Application server and Web server should be installed. The web role service Application Development should be installed, including ASP.NET functionality. The web role service Security should be installed, including Basic Authentication and Windows Authentication. To enable Snow Inventory clients to communicate with the server you need to specify and open a port (any) to be used (default port TCP 443). DATABASE SERVER Component Minimum requirements Database requirements Microsoft SQL Server 2008, 2008 R2, or 2012 Express editions not supported Operating system Processor Disk configuration RAM Network card Required database configuration Microsoft Windows Server 2008 x64, 2008 R2, 2012, or 2012 R2 Dual Xeon 2.0 GHz Quad Core or equivalent 540 GB disk space 400 GB data files 100 GB log files 40 GB tempdb files The Snow databases are highly IO-intensive. It is recommended to have at least 300 IOPS on the disk drives. If mechanical disk drives are used, it is good practice to keep the data files, log files, and tempdb files on separate disk drives. For information on Raid storage configuration - Storage Top 10 Best Practice (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc966534.aspx) 64 GB or greater 100/1000 Mbit Ethernet Refer to the section SQL Server Configuration below. Page 3 of 6
SQL SERVER CONFIGURATION The following settings need to be set during the SQL Server installation: The only features that need to be installed are the Database Engine Service and the Management Tools - Basic. No additional services should be installed, since these consume system resources. Security mode should be Mixed, to allow both Windows Authentication and SQL Logins. Data files, log files, and tempdb files should be configured to use separate drives, as described in the table Database Server above. Case sensitive collations not supported. The following settings should be set on the databases SNOWDB and SnowLicenseManager: Recovery model should be set to simple. The autoshrink option should be set to false. The Snow update job automatically shrinks the databases. We recommend to set Autogrowth to either 10% or at least 5000 MB to avoid too many auto-growth events. MEMORY SETTINGS For optimal performance, the maximum memory allocation should be set to 85-90% of the total RAM. This can be adjusted in the Management Studio by following this procedure: 1. In Object Explorer, right-click the server and select Properties. 2. Select the page Memory. 3. Under Server Memory Options, enter the amount that you want for the Maximum server memory (85-90% of total RAM). Page 4 of 6
PARALLELISM SETTINGS For optimal performance, two settings related to parallelism also need to be adjusted in the Management Studio. 1. Select the page Advanced. 2. Under Parallelism, do the following: Set the Cost Threshold for Parallelism value to 50. For assistance with fine-tuning of this value, please contact Snow Software. Check that Max Degree of Parallelism is not set to 1, which prohibits parallelism. The value should be set either to 0 or to N-1, where N is the number of processors. Page 5 of 6
MAINTENANCE It is required that backup of the two databases SNOWDB and SnowLicenseManager is performed on a daily basis. The recommended time of the day to do this backup is 2 hours prior to the scheduled data update job. It is highly recommended to store the backup on a different physical location than the database server itself. TEST ENVIRONMENT It is highly recommended to have a specific server dedicated to testing. This server should have a setup identical to the production environment. The test server could be used to evaluate new versions and upgrades before they are put in production. Page 6 of 6