Are Multiple environments needed? How much resources?

[deec]

In our organization we normally stand up 3 servers for applications like Qlikview: DEV, UAT, PROD.
In the case of NPrinting, do people normally do their development in a DEV/UAT environment? Or just utilize PROD with a limited distribution? I am confused about how to migrate all the elements needed if it is best to do multiple environments. In Qlikview, for example, we only need to migrate physical files from one environment to the next, and create a new task. In NPrinting, it seems like there would be a larger burden of creating all new apps, connections, tasks, filters, etc... in separate environments. This would be time-consuming and prone to errorsif we have to enter everything through the web UI.

Naturally I'd want at least 2 environments in case we want to test a server-wide change, like a new add-on, without risking uptime in the PROD environment.
Maybe someone with experience could point me to a knowledge base on NPrinting environment/migrations best practices.

A secondary question is regarding the resources needed. I do not know how to estimate the amount of resources needed for a new NPrinting server. I have options to set up servers with 1 - 8 cores (Xenon) and 4-518Gb RAM. I don't want to have too few resources, but don't want to be wasteful.

[Ruggero_Piccoli]

Hi,

How many servers you want to install is your choice.

You can migrate the whole server from testing to production by creating a backup of the first and restore on the second. In this case they must be at the same version and the restore process delete everything on the destination server and restore everything you have in the development one.

You can also export a single report and import it in the destination. In this case connections and users must already be created in the destination server and both servers must be at the same version.

Pay attentions at connections to the QlikView Servers, each one must have its own. So you can develop a report template by connecting to QVS DEV and then change to QVS PROD but they both must have the same document with the same objects.

About sizing and performances they were already discussed in this community and in the official online help so I suggest to start by reading the available material.

Best Regards,

Ruggero

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[deec]

Thanks for your input Ruggero,

I saw in the help the (lack of) support for moving from test to production environments: https://help.qlik.com/en-US/nprinting/February2018/Content/AdministeringQVNprinting/Import-export-re... but was hoping that there was a tool or add-on to move all of the needed elements (connections, filters, tasks, etc.)

I suspect most people are developing in the production environment and simply expanding the user group once the report is ready. Are there any drawbacks to this approach? that would outweigh having to manually re-do every connection, filter, task, etc.

You mentioned that sizing and performance was previously discussed. I will try again to search through the discussions, please let me know if you have saved any relevant posts.
The online help provides min/max parameters, but I don't see any way to estimate usage depending on reports/users/frequency there

[Lech_Miszkiewicz]

Hi Damian,

the best source of information is https:// help.qlik.com

re resources:

Think for a moment what NPrinitng does when it creates reports.... You will notice that most of "hard work" is done by QlikView or Qlik Sense server - so any performance measurements should be mainly done on that side of the setup. NPrinting itself does not consume much of the resource (in scenario when you dont use LOCAL connection to qvw) and setups described in help document are just right. Depending on what Qlik (View or Sense) you are going to connect to there are different methods described on how to scale and improve performance of nprinitng.

In terms of development in "production" - i do not see any issue with it as long as you fully know the product and you know exactly what to expect when creating reports / tasks. If you are unsure what is happening in the background you might be developing report which will put a lot of stress on Qlik and NPrinting environment and will make both of them unresponsive - that is the only risk in my opinion.

PS. There is no add-on to migrate reports. I personally think it would not be possible to create one as NPrinintg is developed very fast and its underlying repository also changes very often. Therefore solutions mentioned by Ruggero are the best ones and the only reliable ones.

regards

Lech

[Ruggero_Piccoli · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion. We are aware that a tool to migrate also connections, tasks and other entities will be appreciated but I don't know when it will be released.

Note that report import and export already creates filters if they are not available.

Best Regards,

Ruggero

---------------------------------------------

When applicable please mark the appropriate replies as CORRECT https://community.qlik.com/docs/DOC-14806. This will help community members and Qlik Employees know which discussions have already been addressed and have a possible known solution. Please mark threads as HELPFUL if the provided solution is helpful to the problem, but does not necessarily solve the indicated problem. You can mark multiple threads as HELPFUL if you feel additional info is useful to others.