Panorama Necto Load Balancing Installation Guide (12.5 and above)
Table of Contents Panorama Necto Load Balancing Guide (12.5 and above)... 1 Table of Contents... 2 Background and Load Balancing Using Microsoft Clustering Technologies... 3 Panorama Necto Cluster Implementation Rules:... 4 Appendix A... 5
Background Panorama Necto is often installed in large networks with hundreds or thousands of users. The Necto Intelligence server is designed with special care for high performance and high availability, to enable optimal performance certain best practices should be followed when installing over large networks. In many of those cases, Panorama software recommends to install more than one Necto server using the Microsoft Windows Servers Clustering technology for IIS servers. This solution utilizes its features of failover capabilities and load balancing for high performance. When using this kind of configuration, there is a need for special care for installation and configuration of the Panorama system. This document explains recognized issues and describes the recommended configuration changes and settings. Load Balancing Using Microsoft Clustering Technology The Microsoft Server family provides integrated clustering services and technologies to deliver higher levels of service and availability. The Windows Server family provides two types of clustering services: Cluster service and Network Load Balancing. Installing Panorama on top of these clustering services enables Panorama to service high loads of requests and serve networks of hundreds and thousands of users (Please note however that these cannot be used on the same server please refer to Microsoft KB http://support.microsoft.com/kb/235305 for more details).
Panorama Necto Cluster Implementation Rules: A Step by Step Guide To start and use Panorama Necto for Load Balancing, do the following: 1. Configure Network load balancing using Microsoft tools. You should have N identical servers and one unique URL to access the server farm. 2. Before starting the Necto installations make sure that you have a single domain user that will run the Necto Service on all the machines, this user must be both a local administrator on each of the Necto servers, an OLAP administrator on the OLAP machine and be part of the sysadmin role on the SQL machine which will house the Panorama databases. 3. We require that each Necto installation which is part of the cluster will have it s own instance of Microsoft Tabular, so you should have 1:1 Tabular instances for Installations and a single SQL server for the central SQL Panorama Database repository. 4. To install Panorama Necto on all the servers, install the same versions, including service packs and hotfixes a. Run the first Necto installation, Choose Production/application server option (when prompted), pointing the installation to the central SQL Server for the databases and the Unique Tabular instance for the Necto Modeling and allow it to complete then restart the machine. b. Follow the instructions in Appendix A. c. Open the registry editor. d. Close the Necto browser windows and stop the Necto Services. e. For installation #2 onwards Repeat the following steps: i. Choose Production/application server option (when prompted), point the databases to the SQL Express option and the Unique Tabular instance for the Necto Modeling and allow it to complete then restart the machine. ii. Stop the Necto services. iii. Open the registry editor. iv. Open Necto Administration Tools and choose Update DB Settings then edit the DBServer, DB User and DB Password fields to point at the central SQL repository, leave the OLAP Server as it is. v. Follow the instructions in Appendix A. 5. Perform an IISRESET on all Servers 6. Restart the Necto Services on all servers
Appendix A 1. Move Files Folder from \E-BI\Administration Service to a designated file share location such as \\yourserver\nectosharedfiles (for installation #1 only) 2. Apply folder sharing on the central shared location and make sure that the folder allows read/write access for the Necto Service user from all the Necto servers that are part of the cluster. 3. Add the following registry string value to all balanced servers AdminFilesPath in the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Panorama\Necto X.X\Admin (If this registry string value is missing or left as null, it will default to the following path: \E_BI\Administration Service\Files ) Example: AdminFilesPath - > \\YourServer\NectoSharedFiles