Server System Requirements

Last update: 2022-10-04
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IMPORTANT

Read more about Data Workbench’s End-of-life announcement.

Identify minimum requirements and recommendations for Data Workbench server components before planning and implementing your system.

DPU Requirements

The server Data Processing Unit (DPU) is the main data processing component of Data Workbench. It listens for network connections from Data Workbench, reads raw source data from the File Server Unit (FSU) and uses substantial computational and storage resources.

Licensed Capacity

Please refer to the Services Description in the Adobe Data Workbench (Insight) Service Agreement for license capacity information.

NOTE

For MS System Center Endpoint Protection in Windows 2012 Servers, these executables need to be added to the Excluded Processes: >

  • InsightServer64.exe
  • ReportServer.exe
  • ExportIntegration.exe

DPU System Recommendations and Requirements

Adobe provides recommendations regarding a Data Workbench design that meets your business needs. However, the following guidelines are useful when selecting the operating system (OS) and hardware, because the optimized nature of the DPU software places specific requirements on the OS/hardware platform.

If a single dataset is limited by the capacity or speed of a single DPU, you can cluster them. For example, suppose you have three licensed copies of the DPU software that are used together to more quickly run a larger dataset. As the data is divided between the machines evenly, the licensed capacity of the dataset is multiplied by three. In addition, the processing speed per row becomes three times faster than a single DPU.

To achieve the best performance from your DPU investment, Adobe recommends the following high-performance components described in the following table:

Required Recommended

Operating System

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 x64

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 x64

Microsoft Windows Server 2016 x64

CPU

See recommendations.

Latest-generation 4-core+ processors from Intel or AMD are recommended. For optimal performance, 8-cores; for a trade-off between speed and cost, 4-cores are recommended.

RAM

8 GB

12 GB

Working Data Storage

1TB+ of total logical temp storage.

Low latency access to the disk sub-system

For temporary storage Adobe recommends either:

  • (4 to 8) * (750GB or higher) SATA HDDs (3.5” spindle.)
  • (6 to 10) * (300GB or higher) SATA HDDs (2.5” spindle.)

These should be configured in a JBOD array. Alternatively, when gross disk capacity exceeds 2TB, an array of 2-disk RAID1 volumes can be used. For example, configure six disks as a 3*(2*750GB RAID 1 pair.)

System Data Storage

Additionally, Adobe requires high-availability storage of a modest size (20GB) for the OS, DPU software, and other system software.

Clustering Hardware

See recommendations.

Use a homogenous set of servers. In a DPU cluster, the slowest server reduces the performance of the whole dataset.

Clustering Network Performance A switched-gigabit Ethernet connection or greater.

Alternative Disk Subsystems

When considering alternative disk subsystems for temp storage, consider the following factors and guidelines:

  • The DPU is unusually demanding of a high performance disk system, so setting up an inadequate disk subsystem can cause performance bottlenecks.
  • The DPU software does its own performance-oriented data striping across a set of JBOD disks. Do not use RAID to increase speed.
  • Adobe recommends that the DPU has 400+ MB/s aggregate sustained bandwidth to the disks.
  • Average read sizes are very high (2MB+). For this reason 15K or 10K SAS disks often perform a little better (or worse) than SATA disks at a significant cost and capacity penalty.
  • Avoid using a SAN architecture. Experience shows that the cost to get a SAN to perform at the levels required is usually extreme.
  • The local disk subsystem is used as scratch space—no data is permanently lost from a HDD failure, so consider avoiding costly, slower, high-availability systems.

Speed Considerations

Adobe cannot provide a warranty or representation concerning the speed at which data is processed by a configured Data Workbench, because a variety of factors impact the data processing speed, including but not limited to the following:

  • Number of rows of data
  • Number of dimensions (columns) of data
  • Number and complexity of custom processing steps
  • Use of clustering
  • Speed of hardware

File Server Unit Requirements

The server’s File Serving Unit (FSU) is the main data storage and management component of Data Workbench. The FSU acts as a file server for raw source data to the DPU, and, when appropriate, coordinates the clustering of DPUs. Each FSU is licensed to supply source data to up to five (5) DPUs.

FSU Components Recommendations

Operating System, CPU, RAM

These requirements are the same as those of the DPU. However, for the FSU, Adobe recommends using the minimum requirements rather than following the recommendations.

Disk System

The FSU requires highly-available, redundant storage for large volumes of data. Adobe will work with you to determine your exact requirements.

Adobe recommends:

  • (12 or more) * (750GB or greater) SATA HDDs in a RAID 5/6 configuration.
  • High-performance SAN connection supporting 100MB/s+ sustained bandwidth.

As the FSU holds the raw source data, any loss would be unrecoverable, and Adobe suggests backing up this data on a regular basis.

Network Performance

Adobe requires switched-gigabit Ethernet connections between FSUs and DPUs working together.

Sensor Requirements

Data Workbench Sensor collects event data from web, application, and data collection servers to be transmitted to any server. Sensor’s instrumentation ensures consistently accurate measurement of events that occur in your Internet channel. Sensor supports many combinations of Web server software and operating system.

Sensor System Recommendations

The following table describes system recommendations for Sensor:

Features Recommended

Disk Storage

512 MB minimum.

RAM

32 MB of RAM must be available to Sensor on the HTTP or other server computer that is its host.

Network Performance

1 Mbps or greater network connection to a repeater server or data workbench server . Sensor typically consumes far less bandwidth than one (1) Mbps. Your Adobe consultants will help you estimate the actual amount of bandwidth that would be required on a routine basis.

Network Ports and Firewalls

Sensor connects to the data workbench server using HTTPS (typically port 443, though this is configurable) or HTTP (typically port 80, though this is configurable).

The appropriate port on any firewall that resides between a Sensor and the target data workbench server or repeater server should be opened only between the respective Sensor hosting computer and the data workbench server or repeater server before beginning the Sensor installation process. Sensor makes a uni-directional HTTPS or HTTP connection to an data workbench server or repeater server.

Network Management Systems

Existing network management systems should monitor the health of the underlying computer hardware (for example, disk space, network service) and network connectivity as well as the Windows Event Log or UNIX syslog.

Server Time Synchronization

Ensure that the computer system time is continuously synchronized across every computer that hosts a Sensor . The Web server applications and computers that are monitored by Sensor must have synchronized system times for the event data collected from them to be accurate. Please refer to your operating system's documentation for steps to synchronize system times on an ongoing basis with NTP or other such time synchronization facility.

DNS Name Usage

Adobe recommends that Sensors use a DNS name (instead of an IP address) to resolve the network address of a data workbench server or repeater server. When a Sensor uses a DNS name, the host web server's DNS or local hosts file needs to be configured to resolve the name of the data workbench server or repeater server.

Support Server Software

The following table lists the most common combinations that Sensor supports:

Web Server Software Operating System

Apache Server / IBM HTTP Server 2.2

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or later; RedHat Enterprise Linux 6.x or later; Sun Solaris 8.x or later; IBM AIX 5.1x or later.

Apache Server 2.4

RedHat Enterprise Linux 6.x or later

Microsoft IIS

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or later

Java Application Servers (Tomcat, JBoss, iPlanet, Weblogic)

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or later; RedHat Enterprise Linux 6.x or later; Sun Solaris 8.x or later; IBM AIX 5.1x or later.

For other server and operating system combinations, please consult Adobe regarding availability. Not all features of Sensor are available with all combinations of web/application server and operating system. For more information about particular Sensor releases, please contact Adobe Support.

Report Server Requirements

Data workbench report server is the component that allows the output of scheduled reporting. The reports that are output can either be in the form of .PNG images or .XLS spreadsheets placed in a file system, or as emails. Its hardware requirements are identical to the Data Workbench Client.

The following requirements exist for report server:

Network Management

Adobe recommends that existing network management systems monitor the hardware and network that the Data Workbench platform relies on.

In addition, Adobe recommends monitoring the Windows event logs of the FSUs and DPUs, which are written to when an error occurs.

NOTE

Any networked storage system hosting log files needs to provide at least 10MB per DPU of sustained bandwidth.

Data Availability

It is a normal and required practice for a server DPU to process and re-process data into new or refreshed dataset.

This may occur because of configuration changes, data source changes, hardware changes, inappropriate configuration, hardware failure, software failure, power failure, and so forth. When such processing or re-processing occurs, all dataset and system data is required to be immediately available to the DPU and FSU components. Failure to adhere to this requirement can lead to significant and unnecessary system down time.

DPU and FSU Network Issues

Considerations to keep in mind when working with DPU and FSU networks.

  • For networked log file distribution, any networked storage system hosting log files needs to provide at least 10MB per DPU of sustained bandwidth.
  • The DPU, FSU, and Data Workbench inter-communicate bi-directionally via HTTP or HTTPS on port 80 or 443 (by default; ports can be alternatively configured).
  • Data Workbench Sensor(s) must be able to connect (one-way) to the servers.
  • To allow the DPU to send alert messages via SMTP, it must be able to contact the configured SMTP server.
  • Adobe recommends that FSUs and DPUs be given network names such as FSU01.CLIENT.COM to avoid reconfiguration if the case of an IP-address change.
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