Best Practices of Qlik Sense Multi-Node Setup, Load Balancing & Maintenance(Let's Discuss Here)

[rohitk1609]

Hello Everyone,

First of all, thanks for reading! I found it is amazing to connect myself to people around the world and communicate with my writings.

This page is indented to discuss best practices for  Multi-Node Setup & Load Balancing primarily, You may drop your use case or problem in comment, we will provide you best possible solution instantly.

Below content guide you to set up Multi-Node Qlik Setup & Load Balancing. It will help you to know Qlik technical terms, ask question more precious way which will help usor anyoe to provide solution more accurately.

Business intelligence is an agile process, gradually BI solution changes and updates. Enterprise grows so are data and end users.

When data grows and business logic gets complex, we need more resources to calculate the result and serve to users. Afterwards, Single Node (small) site performance decreases with time which could lay down the credibility and quality of BI solution.

Multi node site is  Qlik site(could have multiple Qlik servers ) where load is getting managed between more than one system and could have more than one  Fai-lover Candidate which takes charge in absence of central node automatically.

Note: we can have multiple fail-over candidates in one site, we call it passive central.

There are certain parameter which help you to take decision whether we should move to multi node site or remain on single node.

Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows on-premises Deployment Scenarios

So below content is for such users who have made mind to upgrade their Qlik site to multi node.

Few naming conventions we will follow in below content:

1. Consumer node: which must has proxy service enable
2. Scheduler node: which has scheduler and engine services are enabled
3. Central: which is controlling whole Qlik site.
4. Failover Candidate(Passive central)
5. Resources: RAM and Cores(virtual cores)

Since June 2017 , installation setup has shared persistence way only where Apps and RepoDB data stay at persistence layer and both are shared with other nodes (rim or child).

Now why do we need to share Apps and Repository data with child or rim nodes?

Answer: to manage load in simple

Next Question: what exactly we share to balance the load practically?

Answer: Resources in Qlik site.

Next Question: what will be achieved if we share the resources?

Answer: Reduce the resource consumption while end users are accessing apps from one node i.e. central to consumer node (proxy service is must) and reduce the resource consumption and distribute it to scheduler node (scheduler and engine service is must) while any app reloads.

There could be many scenario how you would design your multi node site:

1. You want one central and one consumer and one scheduler node.
2. Two scheduler and two consumer and central
3. Central and scheduler node.

Ideally: Two scheduler and two consumer and central node comes in best practice for extra large enterprise.

You can read about single node, small, medium , large and extra large Qlik shared site in detail:

Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows on-premises Deployment Scenarios

Multi node site would increase your Qlik Sense site availability, how?

We have a concept fail-over candidate, which is one of the scheduler node or such node which has all services and take charge automatically while Central node is down. We can manipulate the sensing time of failover candidate to central node in latest version.

Solutions which will guide you to deply multi node side

1. How to Install multi node site:

Installation of Multi Node site

Installing Qlik Sense in a multi node site - Qlik Sense

1. How to configure multi-node site:

Installing Qlik Sense in a multi-node site

       2.  Load balancing:

Adding load balancing

Configuring load balancing to isolate development nodes

          3. Fail-over candidate

Fail- candidate or we can call it passive central node which is ping in a set time(you can customize it below 10 minutes) to central or master node and when it doesn't get response it will take charge and become active central or master node.

Note: Where you install your postgresDB during installation that server has one extra service Qlik Repository Database which is running the postgresDB. So in case you don't have a dedicated persistence layer and installed Repo DB on central node(any server which has Qlik Sense too) then if your central node get down due to power failure or blue screen then fail-over node won't take charge. 

Primary condition of fail over concept needs QlikSenseRepositoryDatabase to be run all time. if QlikSenseRepositoryDatabase is down then whole site is down. 

One important application is attached to article which helps you to review your Qlik site. If you  have any concern over Qlik repository size, QLogs DB size or any component which is accessing excess size than expected, then download the app, import to your Qlik Sense, open it on HUB, there will be three connection which come along with application i.e. PostgreSQL_postgres, PostgreSQL_QLogs and PostgreSQL_QSR. Update password with your super user password of postgresDB which you entered during installation and save it. 

If your user name added as postfix after updatation of connections , go to QMC and make it as they were earlier.

Please do above activities by RDP not from end user side. Reload the app and share it with me so I can review it.

After utilizing above solutions, please post your queries in comment section what is your use case i.e. how many servers are available, how your user comes to site, network load balancer is available or not, reloads are executing on scheduler nodes etc.

In general, multi node or load balancing concept is vast and vary with client to client, so I do believe you may ask question much better when you understand the right terms of Qlik, went through above articles and requirements are clear.

Consider this resource as a open form where we all can post our queries on load balancing and multi node site.

There are few other documents which would help you in Qlik administration

1.Dynamic Sheet Exception With Stream and App Level Security

2.Sheet or App Object Level Security Qlik Sense

Reach to me if there is need of any clarification or need assistance with kumar.rohit1609@gmail.com

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Thanks,
Rohit Kumar

[fabdulazeez]

Hi Rohit, @rohitk1609 

For multi node setup do we need active directory setup? Is there any requirements like same user need to run the services on all nodes. How do we provide access to the file share created as windows share on central node to windows user running services on other nodes?

[Jio]

Hello I need some advice and help.

Our Qliksense Enterprise o n Windows is running Version August 2023 patch 1.
 have 4 nodes all configured as failover candidate with Node Purpose = Both (see screenshot)

Wat do we want:
1. We want to configure 2 nodes with settings Node Purpose = Production and 2 nodes with Node Purpose = Development.
2. The production nodes will be a central node and a Rim-node1
3. The development Nodes will be a Rim-node2 and a Rim-node3.
What have we done so far:
1. We have changed the node purpose as mention above.
2. We have configured the virtual proxy with the setting: “prefix=Node”2 and Session Cookie header name = X-Qlik-Session-Node2””
3. In the load balancing section, we only add Node 2.
But when we try to access the hub on node 2 through msedge {https://<centralnodeurl>/node2/hub
We got the error 400 see attachment.
What are we doing wrong?

Any help or advise will be very welcome.
Regards

[TusharDev_Qlik]

@rohitk1609 

When you talk about having 5 nodes for multinode extra large architecture, could you please share the Node configuration you are assuming here? (No of cores and RAM for each node)

Are you using a dedicated node for handling Nprinting publish task execution load?

[rohitk1609]

Hi, I am not sure why you need to do Node Purpose = Production and 2 nodes with Node Purpose = Development?

why don't you connect all 4 servers and make one server central server. try server1 as proxy or consumer node for client, server 2 is central. server 3 as scheduler node where reload happen and server 4 where your people will do development

[rohitk1609]

@TusharDev_Qlik Its not easy to answer what congif server you need without knowing use case.

I have a sheet which I use when I need to calculate the server requirment. I am facing problem while attaching the sheet here. you can google it, its name is Qlikview Server RAM Calculator

[rohitk1609]

I know its late to answer but When we change Central Node to 'Master', all the reload tasks fail, it means your app has either access issue on rim node or something, else , try to open Qlik locally on rim node as go to rim server, open browser, https://rim1/hub and run the app

[lobmeister165]

Hi Rohit

We are looking to upgrade our QS site to a 4-node setup.

One node as the central node (also able to do some of the scheduled reload tasks)

Another node to be exclusively for developers to create/edit/reload unpublished apps and also main node responsible for scheduled reload tasks (having a specific alias which developers can use to access, separate from users)

Two further nodes as consumer nodes which should serve end-users exclusively via a network load balancer (sharing same URL alias used by users to access) and have NO scheduled task responsibilities

Can you explain how this would be best set up in terms of node / proxy / virtual proxy / load balancing / host allow list settings on the QMC,  as well as additional needs for a network load balancer

Many Thx

[Deepakdk]

HI ,

After load balancing , we have noticed that even the smallest application 256 GB RAM server is taking time to open up. 

If we run it on single server its much faster. how can we identify the root cause for the same.

Regards

Deepak

[rohitk1609]

@lobmeister165 Your query has long answer and few dependent questions. Lets connect at kumar.rohit1609@gmail.com, lets have a quick discussion 

[StefanoC]

Hi @rohitk1609 ,

We are looking to upgrade our QS site to a 3-node setup, similar to @lobmeister165 situation, but without developer node (1 scheduler/central, 2 consumers). I would like to know if you can share what were your suggestions.

I would then like to know if the 3 servers can be in a workgroup (not in a same domain), considering that the users could be local (servername\user), and what are the pros and cons of the 2 scenarios.

Thanks in advance, kind regards. Stefano