The Installation Scenarios describes the different ways we install IFS Applications.
The outline of the installation process is:
Once the system is installed the installation technician or the configuration consultant continues to configure the system. The instructions are in the Foundation1 Configuration Guide.
The production environment scenarios are aimed for the final deployment models at customer sites. Of course these scenarios are also used when setting up internal environments, for example for test and reference environments. The scenarios differ in ease of installation, to complexity of architecture and stability of runtime.
This topic describes installation scenarios for IFS Applications production environments.
It is possible to install IFS Applications in different configurations in the storage tier, middle tier, DMZ, and client network. Which configurations are selected will affect characteristics such as availability, scalability, security, and amount of hardware required. One particular combination of configurations in the various tiers is called a scenario. This topic introduces a number of common scenarios for installing IFS Applications. It is however possible to design other scenarios by choosing other combinations of configurations.
The picture below shows an overview of the principal deployment components and possible configurations for IFS Applications. For simplification reasons some deployment components have been left out of this picture.
To avoid confusion about exactly what a server is, the difference between an application server and a J2EE container, etc. etc. you should make sure you read about the Installation Guide Structure and Conventions used in this installation guide.
The big picture of things to install, not describing what gets installed on what machines, this is defined in the scenarios.
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one database machine, one application server machine, one web server machine and optional DMZ machine
clustered database, clustered application server, multiple web servers and optional DMZ machine
This page describes the architecture of the Standard Production Environment. It includes one database server, one application server and a separate server for the IFS Web Client framework.
The architecture for a standard production environment.
The standard production environment is, depending on the hardware used, suitable for low to mid volume deployments of IFS Applications without the requirement for fail-over capability.
The defining characteristic for a production environment is that the storage tier database is installed on one machine, and the middle tier on a separate machine. The middle tier machine will also run separate J2EE containers for the service tier and web tier respectively. The purpose of this is to better utilize larger memory on the machine, and to introduce some degree of resilience. Should the J2EE container for the web tier need to be brought down (or crash) the services tier can continue to operate.
If an external facing (business to business) web client is used it is installed on a separate machine, typically in the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone)
64-bit operating system.
Capacity to handle web client users can be scaled up by installing the web tier on a separate J2EE container on the same machine, or as a next step on a separate machine.
Agents on separate machine
For customers with higher volume printing the memory and CPU intensive document creation process can be moved to a Distributed Print Agent (DPA). The purpose of the DPA is to offload the heavy print processing from the J2EE container running the services tier.
Note: This scenario is certified from SP2
The high-end production environment is a bigger architectural structure to provide an environment suitable for larger and more fault tolerant deployment of IFS Applications. As product certification progresses the available options will be described in this page. Application Server clustering using JBoss and IBM Websphere is supported. Database clustering is achieved using Oracle RAC functionality.
The architecture for a high-end production environment. Shades indicates duplication of entities and implies clustering.
The high end production scenario is the basis for high volume and/or high availability solutions.
The main objective of this scenario is to avoid single point of failure, and to provide scale-out capability in all tiers. The storage tier database should be set up as an Oracle RAC cluster over at least two machines for fault tolerance and failover. The middle tier uses a J2EE cluster over at least two machines. Each of those machines has it’s own batch server to remove batch server as a single point of failure.
More machines in the Oracle RAC cluster
Separate the middle tier cluster into separate clusters for the services tier and the web tier
This page describes the general architecture for an environment used for demo and test.
The architecture for a Demo & Test installation, using a single
host machine for both storage tier and middle tier.
This basic scenario is suitable for demo and test environments. The defining characteristic of this scenario is that everything is installed on a single machine, minimizing hardware requirements. Providing the machine has enough memory it should easily support a team of testers or demonstrators.
The first and natural step to scale up from this scenario is to separate onto two machines. One for the database storage tier and one for the entire middle tier.
This page describes the general architecture for an environment used for demo and test.
The architecture for a Demo & Test installation, using a single
host machine for both storage tier and middle tier.
This basic scenario is suitable for demo and test environments. The defining characteristic of this scenario is that everything is installed on a single machine, minimizing hardware requirements. Providing the machine has enough memory it should easily support a team of testers or demonstrators.
The first and natural step to scale up from this scenario is to separate onto two machines. One for the database storage tier and one for the entire middle tier.