Clustering QlikView servers

[mikevmalta]

Hi,

we would like to cluster our QlikView production environment from one server into a clustered one.

We are planning to have two clustered servers with QVS services and another one with the QMC service to manage the load balancing.On top of this we would like to also cater for Disaster Recovery (cold). Therefore we are planning to put the QMS and one QVS server on site 1, and the other QVS server on site 2, so that in case of site 1 unavailability we can restore QMS on site 2 and the dashboards would still be available.

In order to do this we are planning the following actions:

     1. Set up 3 servers on which we will install

          - server 1 [site 1]: QMS, QDS

          - server 2 [site 1]: QVS, DSC, QVWS

          - server 3 [site 2]: QVS, DSC, QVWS

     2. All dashboards and QlikTech ProgramData files will reside on a shared storage (SAN). We will configure the latter by changing the path of the QVManagementService.exe.config file on server 1

     3. Configure QMS and add server 2 and 3 as part of the cluster

     4. Set up server 4 [site 2] and install : QMS, QDS, - services switched off for DR as suggested at (Clustering Issues). Will also modify QVManagementService.exe.config to point to SAN.

My questions:

1. Are the actions listed above correct or are we missing something?

2. Since servers 1 and 4 will be hosting only the QMS and QDS, what are the typical resources (RAM, HDD, CPU) that they should contain?

3. Is there any automated process that switches on the QMS and QDS services on server 4 (DR) should server 1 (production) fail?

Many thanks in advance

Michael

[prabhu0505]

1. Are the actions listed above correct or are we missing something?

Yes it looks complete for me. Hope you are using QVWS not IIS, if not i would advice to separate IIS on different machine.

And also if possible see if you can get cluster publisher license too. That way, you need not waste a server as cold backup, in most of the companies cold server will not be used at all.

2. Since servers 1 and 4 will be hosting only the QMS and QDS, what are the typical resources (RAM, HDD, CPU) that they should contain?

Generally one-fourth of QV server. IF QV Server is 256 GB, then 64 GB of publisher. But this is not ideal for cases, based on load frequency, parallelism and amount DB we are dealing with, it has decided.

3. Is there any automated process that switches on the QMS and QDS services on server 4 (DR) should server 1 (production) fail?

It can be automated I guess, but it's good to do it manually. You can avoid cold one getting activated  unnecessarily in situations windows upgrade, some other server maintenance activities.

[mikevmalta]

Hi Saravana,

Thanks for your reply, can you kindly elaborate on the below please?

Saravana Prabhu Paramaramaraj wrote:

1. Are the actions listed above correct or are we missing something?

Yes it looks complete for me. Hope you are using QVWS not IIS, if not i would advice to separate IIS on different machine.

And also if possible see if you can get cluster publisher license too. That way, you need not waste a server as cold backup, in most of the companies cold server will not be used at all.

How does a cluster publisher licence replace disaster recovery scenario compared to normal cluster QlikView server licence? What if the server where the QMC fails when having cluster QlikView Publisher?

2. Since servers 1 and 4 will be hosting only the QMS and QDS, what are the typical resources (RAM, HDD, CPU) that they should contain?

Generally one-fourth of QV server. IF QV Server is 256 GB, then 64 GB of publisher. But this is not ideal for cases, based on load frequency, parallelism and amount DB we are dealing with, it has decided.

So taking the one-fourth rule is not enough? Is there some guidelines on how to calculate the amount of resources required?

Thanks in advance.

Kind Regards

Michael

[prabhu0505]

1. Install QMS service on backup server as well but keep it stop state, when there is a need just turn it on.

2. Pls refer below links, will give you better idea.

Correctly sizing a QlikView Publisher server

Qlikview server sizing

[#5]

Are both your sites in the same network subnet?

Clustered QlikView Server License Key

...

The servers must be installed on the same network subnet and have a shared root document directory; hence the requirement for a shared network storage.

[mikevmalta]

Thanks Saravana!

[mikevmalta]

Hi Egor,

Thanks for your reply, yes both sites are on the same network subnet.

[#8]

This is good as otherwise you won't be able to cluster them.