AOS as Load Balancer and AOS dedicated for Batch process

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by Community Member

Good day.

Hi Experts,

May I seek your advise with regards to initial/minimum server specifications of a dedicated AOS as a Load Balancer and dedicated AOS intended to run/process batch? Any guidelines that I must follow to make this activity successful?

Thanks,

Raph

*This post is locked for comments

I have the same question (0)

All responses (6)

Answers (0)

Martin Dráb 237,795 Most Valuable Professional on at

Like (0)

Report

You must consider the amount of expected load (usually measured in number of transactions per time unit). The minimal server specifications will be quite different if you make ten transactions per hour or per second.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

guk1964 10,888 on at

Like (0)

Report

In principle Ax is an Enterprise System and that implies high users and transactions. However, what is a high volume of transactions, and the frequency of system update for a retail supermarket chain will be quite different than for a heavy equipment manufacturer.

Other factors like whether you use Enterprise of Standard SQL database, spec of server etc, whether you work across shifts, 24 x7, also come in to play.

There are several other considerations e.g :

- load balancing for number of users, typically 60 or 5000 transactions an hour - but those are very wide ranging guidelines

importance of failover for your operation and whether you have any other failover or clustering in place i.e. how much downtime/loss of data can you afford. If you only do back office finance maybe a day's downtime is acceptable, but for a retail operation or a hotel or a busy call centre even 5minutes may be too long

the cost of extra/ server/database/AOS licenses

In principle I would always want a minimum of 3

- for transactions load balance and failover needs at least two

- and another for batch processing of workflows, retail sync etc. depends on your use.

( there will be a 4th AOS to do the load balancing controlling, but that does not need a license)

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Vilmos Kintera 46,149 on at

Like (0)

Report

I typically recommend the following setup for a medium-sized company:

2 physical sites which are geographically not too far with redundant fiber-optic connectivity.

1st site holds: 1 user AOS, 1 batch AOS (and separate 3rd AIF AOS server if you have many integrations)

2nd site holds: same

I do not typically use load balancer AOS, but provide the 2 AX AOS instances in the AX Client Configuration instead, along with setting up the AX AOSes in the Clustered server configuration, with which users are getting evenly distributed. If one site goes down, the other can take over. That is a minimum of 4 AX AOS in Production, with an active-active DR scenario. SQL Server Connectivity between the sites must be guaranteed to cover latency and communication recommendations by Microsoft.

Reporting AX configuration points at one of the batch AOSes, and if the site goes down, as part of the Disaster Recovery process you can change the config to point to the other site.

Please note that the above scenario does not include other servers (SQL,SSRS,SSIS,SSAS,Remote Desktop Service host, etc.)

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi Martin,

Do you have an idea on how many RAM and CPU would be needed if I create a minimum/standard AOS dedicated for load balancing?

Thanks,

Raph

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Community Member on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi Vilmos,

So you mean, you have 2 AOS and add these two to the client configuration of each workstation? This is what I am planning to do:

What is the minimum specs of the load balancer? Is it better to have this or your practice which is non clustered?

Thanks,

Raph

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Vilmos Kintera 46,149 on at

Like (0)

Report

You do not have to put the AX configuration on every box, the correct way is to only place a shortcut link on the workstations, pointing to the AXC file in a network share location readable by your users. That way you can maintain AX connectivity centrally.

You can have multiple AOS instances deployed on one VM/physical box, so if you insist on having a dedicated load balancer which I consider waste of resources, you can put it on one of your AX AOS instance boxes and count +1 GB RAM, +2 CPU cores as a minimum.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No