4.2 Infrastructure Planning

4.2.1 Gathering VM Host Server Requirements

  1. Determine the Filr component server hardware configurations; from this information determine the hosting server requirements.  

  2. Use the above disk space requirements and Filr installation manual server requirements as guides for determining memory, disk space, and processor requirements.

  3. Ensure that the required disk space and memory are available for the Filr deployment.

  4. Test and monitor your pilot deployment to identify connection usage patterns and determine how many Filr servers are required. Currently, a single Filr server can service approximately 500 concurrent user connections.

    For example, you might find that two Filr servers would serve 3,000 users given that all of them are not concurrently connected.

Supported VM Host Platforms

Filr appliances can be hosted on the following software virtualization platforms:

VMware
  • The following VMware host servers are supported for hosting the Filr appliance:

    • ESXi 5.5.x with the latest update

    • ESXi 5.1.x with the latest update

    • ESXi 5.0 with the latest update

    • ESX 4.1.x and ESXi 4.1.x with the latest update

  • (Optional) you can generate an up-to-date compatibility matrix of supported VMware host servers by accessing the VMware Compatibility Guide that is provided by VMware.

    To generate the correct chart from the VMware Compatibility Guide:

    1. Ensure that Guest OS is selected in the What are you looking for field.

    2. In the OS Vendor field, select SUSE, then in the OS Family Name field, select SUSE Linux Enterprise 11.

    3. Click Update and View Results, then look at the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 2 64-bit line of the provided table.

  • Novell recommends that you install VMware Tools on the host server. The path to do this depends on your host platform. For example, for ESXi 5.5, the path is Inventory > Virtual Machine > Guest > Install tools. For instructions and help, use your favorite Internet search engine or access the VMware support site.

  • You will need to use either the VMware web client (for ESXi 5.5), a VMware vSphere client 4.x, or VMware vSphere client 5.x on your management workstation for accessing the host server and appliance for initial configuration.

    Not all versions of the vSphere client are compatible with versions of VMware ESX and ESXi. For a complete matrix of compatibility, refer to the VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes that are provided by VMware.

Xen

Xen is certified to host Filr appliances on the following platforms:

  • SLES 11 SP2, 64-bit

  • SLES 11 SP3, 64-bit

Hyper-V

Hyper-V is certified to host Filr appliances on the following platforms:

  • Windows 2012 Server (as a Role)

  • Windows 2008 R2 Server (as a Role)

  • Hyper-V Server 2012 (standalone)

  • Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (standalone)

Virtual Machine Memory Requirements

Based on the defined files and folder, indexing, and search requirements, define the estimated space needed for the Filr, MySQL, and Search servers.  Check the Novell Filr 1.0.1 Installation and Configuration Guide for the latest data and start with the recommended minimums. Use the following as a guide:

  • Filr Appliance (each): 8 GB of memory and 2 CPUs. At least half of the memory should be dedicated to the Java heap.

  • Database Appliance (if no in-house MySQL service is available): 4 GB of memory and 2 CPUs. (More memory is required if there are more than 1,000 users on the system.)

  • Search Index Appliance (2 required): 4 GB of memory and 2 CPUs. (More memory is required if there are more than 1,000 users on the system.) About 75% of the memory should be dedicated to the Java heap.

For more information, see Filr Server Requirements in the Novell Filr 1.0.1 Installation and Configuration Guide

4.2.2 Ensuring Fault Tolerance

Filr Performance and High-Availability

Novell recommends having at least two clustered Filr servers for basic performance and high-availability. You can add more as your deployment grows through your initial pilot to a phased-in production rollout.

Determine whether a hardware solution (such as an application delivery controller or L4 switch) or a software solution (such as NetIQ Access Manager, Apache, and so forth) will be used to front the Filr servers.

Novell recommends connecting a third Filr Appliance to the shared storage and not fronting it with a load balancer. This appliance can then be used for dedicated administration and file synchronization purposes.

Filr Search Redundancy

Having functional search appliances and the services they provide is vital to the health of the system.

Novell recommends having two Search/Index servers for redundancy (fault tolerance) purposes. Having more than two is not recommended or needed, because there are no performance gains associated with multiple Filr Search appliances.

By using two Search Appliances, you can re-index the appliances at separate times, thus preventing the clients from re-downloading all their data.

If you are using a single search appliance, avoid re-indexing when possible. Re-indexing causes all Windows and Macintosh desktop clients to delete local Filr files and re-download them from the server as the index is recreated.

4.2.3 A Word About Inodes

Each file written to a disk consumes one inode, and Filr writes multiple files to /vashare for each file or directory that is added. For example, if a disk targeted by the /vashare mount point has 3 million inodes, and if 3 million files are written to the /vashare directory, then no more files can be written to that disk unless the amount of inodes is increased. See The File System in Reality in the The Linux Documentation Project.