Software Installation: System Requirements

Hardware Recommendations

The hardware requirements for Omnidex applications vary depending on the size of the database, the nature of the queries and the number of users. That being said, most Omnidex servers are commodity servers with plenty of memory and fast disk access. There are typically two hardware profiles:

Omnidex Indexing Servers

An Omnidex Indexing Server is used to load the indexes on large databases. Companies often receive new data on a regular basis, and since most Omnidex databases have a great deal of indexing, it is better to rebuild some or all of the indexes, rather than applying the updates one at a time. Applications that can be taken offline while indexing occurs do no need a separate Omnidex Indexing Server, but when an application must remain available all of the time, indexing usually occurs on a separate server.

For large relational databases, it is important that the Omnidex Server not be the same machine as the relational database. Relational databases, such as Oracle and SQL Server, consume most of the resources on the server, leaving little processing power for other applications. In these cases, Omnidex should reside on an independent server.

Hardware Requirement
CPU 1 core per concurrent node or database being indexed
Memory 2 GB per concurrent node or database being indexed
Disk Access A high-speed SAN, or separate drives for the database, the indexes and the temporary file directory
Network Gigabit or higher

Omnidex Query Servers

Omnidex Query Servers benefit from multi-processor machines so that queries can be processed in parallel. It is also valuable to avoid other large processing tasks on an Omnidex Query Server. An important key to Omnidex performance is to complete queries quickly before the operating system swaps that process out to process another task.

Hardware Requirement
CPU 1 core per concurrent query or node being processed. Typically, 4-32 cores, with more cores for more concurrent users and large Omnidex Grids.
Memory 250MB per concurrent query or node being processed. Typically, 2 GB per core is used.
Disk Access A high-speed SAN, or separate drives for the database, the indexes and the temporary file directory
Network Gigabit or higher

Operating System Recommendations

We are often asked which is faster, Linux or Windows? It is not an easy question to answer. There are so many other variables, such as the database platform, the amount of memory, the approach to disk storage, and so forth. In a company, the hardware acquisition and personnel costs can be large enough to outweigh the benefit of a slightly faster hardware platform. Because of this, we recommend that each company test with their own hardware, their own database platform and their own client layers.

We have run some limited benchmarks comparing Linux and Windows. In our tests, Linux was about 20% faster. That is consistent with our anecdotal experience, too. That being said, this can change with the differences in multi-user concurrency, disk fragmentation and multi-processor performance. In addition, performance can vary significantly between versions of operating systems. This reinforces the need for companies to test in their own environment with their own configuration.

Some components of the Omnidex software are only available on a Windows operating system. The Omnidex Administrator, the graphical tool for managing Omnidex installations, is only available on a Windows operating system, though it can be used to manage Omnidex databases on remote servers, including Linux servers. New releases of Omnidex typically arrive on the Windows operating system first, with Linux releases following shortly thereafter and other UNIX versions provided as needed.

Additional Resources

See also:

 
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install/requirements.txt ยท Last modified: 2016/06/28 22:38 (external edit)