Server Hardware used for CE 9.0?

[laker42]

We will be implementing CE9.0 in the next couple of months and we are trying to get a handle on what kind of server configuration we should use. I know that CE has several different services (job server, cache & page servers...) I didn't know if we could get good performance having all of these on one server? If anyone has implemented the newest version of CE, could you share what kinds of servers you are using and the performance of them?

Thanks,
John

 

[2techie]

Hi,

For designing the CE system you need to consider so many things like :

1.> How many concurrent users will be there. Will you be interested in Named / Processor / Concurrent Licenses
2.> How many report you will be publishing [Both Scheduled and On Demans].
3.> Do you have fixed time frame for scheduled reports.
4.> How many On Demand reports may be viewed at one time.
5.> What kind of viewer you want to use.

Like that there is big list of questoniare and based on answers to those questions, you can design best CE system. If you are planning to buy CE, Sales Rep from Crystal should that work for you.

Hope that helps.

Vishal

 

[laker42]

We will be purchasing 10 named users licenses and 3 concurrent user licenses. We probably will have no more than 6 or 7 users hitting the server at one time and that number would be an extreme. We have around 20 reports right now that users can use on demand and that would carry over into the CE environment. We plan on using the Eportfolio as a viewer through CE.

John

 

[2techie]

Hi John,

It looks like a pretty basic system. I think you should be OK with one server with around 1 GB RAM. You said you have 20 on demand reports, I would suggest having 2 CPU, that way you will be able to handle more concurrent jobs.

This is just my thought and I would suggest you have CE system estimated from Crystal Guys.

You said you will be using ePortfolio, it is web application where users can view reports. However you still need to decide if you will be using ActiveX, DHTML, Java etc viewers.

Hope that helps.

 

[laker42]

I spoke to soon. We are trying to publish the report to our Intranet and we are using the WCS & page server to serve our reports. When I post the report & access the report via a browser, it does not allow me to access the on demand sub report. Is there a limitation here? We have used normal sub reports fine over the web but didn't know if this was pushing it.

Thanks for the info,
John

 

[laker42]

Sorry about that last post! It was meant for another thread I have going.

John

 

[laker42]

I did contact Crystal Decisions and they will be getting back in touch with me to discuss this. I just wanted to get an idea of what other people are using.

Sorry about the viewer answer, we are currently using the ActiveX viewer with the page server for CR V.8.0. We will probably stay with it but we may change if other viewers will be a better fit for us.

Our current Crystal server is a 1.6 Mhz server with 1 GB of RAM. It is more than adequate with running the WCS & page server we are using now. Just wanted to make sure that it would meet our needs upgrading to CE.

Thanks for this input!
John

 

[JEX]

My 1cents worth - why are you deciding to stay with the ActiveX viewer? If there is no good reason, make sure you check out the new Interactive DHTML viewer Crystal have in CE9 - it's great and allows your users to do some more dynamic things like searches within a report for a subset of the data. The standard CE DHTML viewer has also been enhanced eg. Printing -now allows users to specify page ranges they want to print and automatically sending them to the printer in PDF format.

cheers...J

 

[SteveRemington]

Jex,

DOes the new CE9.0 DHTML viewer place the same additional load on the WCS as the CE8.0 and CE8.5 DHTML viewer placed on the WCS.

One of the big reason for using the ActiveX viewer with CE8/8.5 in addition to the functionality it provided was the fact that it significantly reduced the load on the WCS and therefore could have a significant impact on the hardware chosen.

Regards,
Steve Remington
Wave Business Solutions
steve.remington@wavebusiness.com.au

 

[JEX]

Steve,

In CE9 there are now 2 classes of viewers.
1 class uses the old architecture which is identified by the fact that it has a URL/query string interface (viewrpt.crw call). The ActiveX and Java viewers still fall in this category.

The 2nd class of viewers are script based server side viewers. These are controlled through asp/csp/jsp code and include 3 members: The Report Part viewer, the Report Page Viewer and the Interactive viewer. They are all zero client DHTML viewers. They secure parameters through a session variable (viewreport.csp)

The new Interactive DHTML viewer actually uses the Report Application Server - so any load will be placed here.

The other 2 DHTML viewers will use the Page/Cache servers.

I know that they don't rely on the WCS for printing anymore but do not know of any other load they would place on the WCS. What load was placed on the WCS in the previous versions that you are specifically referring to?

cheers J

 

[icytrue]

the WCS had to take the page images served up by the page server (via the cache server) and convert them into DHTML. Crystal suggested that using the dhtml viewer throughout would halve the number of users a wcs could support.

hth Icytrue

icytrue@hotmail.com