Official Support Articles

[KellyHobson]

In this article, we address best practices through a questionnaire for Qlik Replicate administrators and architects before an environment goes live in production.  Having answers to these questions is helpful for a successful deployment and sustainable implementation. 

Content:

• Pre-deployment
• Qlik Professional Services
• Source
• Source Sizing
• Sizing
• Testing
• Additional Administration
• Table and data level
• Go live
• Support
• Security
• Related Content

Pre-deployment 

1. Is is possible to perform a POC? If a POC already occurred, what would you like to repeat or avoid?
2. Are the source and target endpoint versions in compliance with Replicate Support Matrix?
3. Which role is in charge of installing correct drivers and pre-requisites? DBAs, Replicate administrators, systems engineers, etc.
4. What type of replication will you be requiring (Store changes, Apply changes, both, bi-directional, full load only etc.)?
5. Although driven by your Replicate license, it is helpful to define the following:

1. Number and types of sources
2. Number and types of targets

Qlik Professional Services

1. Is there a process or budget to engage  Qlik Professional services for the following?
   1. Implementing new endpoints
   2. Performance tuning task settings

Source 

1. Is there a source DBA available to help configure source connection? Are they available for troubleshooting?
2. What are the source log retention limitations?
3. Does  Qlik Replicate have proper permissions configured to source DB?
4. Test opportunity: Work with Source DBA to confirm security policy and test permissions access to tables
5. If three or more tasks connecting to a source database, have you considered implementing Log Stream?

Source Sizing

1. Please work with Qlik Replication project owners and administrators to define values for the following: 
   1. Rate of source changes
   2. Number of source schemas
   3. Number of source tables
   4. Size of all tables (rows, data)
2. Do tables have LOB columns? If so, how many tables and what size?

Sizing 

1. Define the location of Servers (source, targets, Qlik Replicate) type (on premise, cloud, on premise virtual machine)
2. Is there hardware already procured to work with or can Qlik help size the hardware (Professional Services)?
3. What is the network bandwidth available between endpoints and Qlik Replicate?
4. Qlik Replicate disk storage size (disk requirements if changes are written to disk)
5. Is your \data folder location in a separate location from the Qlik Replicate install folder? 
6. If using log stream, is your storage path on a separate drive from your /data directory?  This can help with disk contention by having separate drives. 
7. What is your acceptable latency requirement (time from source commit to target commit)?

Testing

1. Define number of environments DEV, QA/TEST, PROD
2. Do you have at least 1 non-production environment that mirrors production for data volume, data types, and processes?
3. Define a testing plan, scripts, queries for:
   
   1. Validating row counts between source and target
   2. Validating any filters or transformations
   3. Validating failover if a HA/failover environment
   4. Validating query times on source and target. If needed, reduce the batch size or increase timeout parameters.
   5. Validating row size limits 
   6. Practicing a Advanced Run Options -> Restart from time or SCN/LSN (and when to use these options)
   7. Adding or removing a table from a task
   8. Apply Conflicts settings such as UPSERT mode 
4. How do we handle maintenance or upgrades on Source DB and target DB? How often do we expect these to occur?

Additional Administration 

1. How many users will be engaging with Qlik Replicate at one time? Who is responsible for managing adding, removing or configuring users?
2. Are notifications configured on server or task errors? For Disk/CPU limits? What emails are included to receive notifications?
3. Is there a naming convention established for sources, targets, and tasks?
4. Is there a change control strategy in place? Qlik Enterprise Manager has audit trail capabilities if also installed with Qlik Replicate environment. 

Table and data level

1. Do tables have PKs? Are PKs changing on any tables? Tables with a PK which is not changing will have the best performance with bulk apply mode. 
2. For change data capture: are you using Transactional apply vs Bulk apply?

Go live

1. Do we bring all task online at once or can they be started sequentially or in batches?

Support

1. How long will it take to perform a full reload on each task?
2. Are there any task/tables where a Full load is not an acceptable option?
3. Do you know how to increase Task and Server logging and/or download diagnostic package?
4. Do we have a team who can manage 24 hour Severity 1 Support?
5. What is process for applying Qlik Replicate service packs with fixes? (i.e Dev then prod, or direct on Prod, how quickly can these fixes be applied?)
6. Are you familiar with decrypting log files?
7. Does your team have access to the Case Portal? 

Security

1. Have you tested access to the system with set password? 
2. Has openSSL been set up and configured for Qlik Replicate UI Console and Server?

Related Content

How To Get Started with Qlik Replicate

Environment

Qlik Replicate 

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.