SYSTEM SETUP FOR SPE PLATFORMS

BEST PRACTICE

SYSTEM SETUP

FOR SPE PLATFORMS

Product

Snow License Manager

Version

7.0

Content

System requirements

SQL Server configuration

Maintenance

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ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT

This document describes the system setup for the server installations of Snow License Manager in a Service Provider Edition (SPE) platform with 100 000 registered client computers.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

These recommendations apply to the server hardware. For the client requirements, please refer to the document System Requirements for all Snow products.

SERVER HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS

 100 000 inventoried client computers registered in the SPE platform

S

Snow License Manager Snow Inventory SQL Server

Server 1 (physical or virtual) X

Server 2 (physical or virtual) X

Server 3 (physical or virtual) X

A

(S

L

M

)

Component Minimum requirements

Operating system Microsoft Windows Server 2008 x64, 2008 R2, 2012, or 2012 R2 Processor Single Xeon 2.0 GHz Quad Core or equivalent

Disk 100 GB free space minimum

RAM 24 GB or greater

Network card 100/1000 Mbit Ethernet Required installed

software

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5

The two roles Application server and Web server should be installed. The web role service Application Development should be installed, including ASP.NET functionality.

The web role service Security should be installed, including Basic Authentication and Windows Authentication.

Required server configuration

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I

(S

I

)

Component Minimum requirements

Operating system Microsoft Windows Server 2008 x64, 2008 R2, 2012, or 2012 R2 Processor Single Xeon 2.0 GHz Quad Core or equivalent

Disk 100 GB free space minimum

RAM 24 GB or greater

Network card 100/1000 Mbit Ethernet Required installed

software

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5

The two roles Application server and Web server should be installed. The web role service Application Development should be installed, including ASP.NET functionality.

The web role service Security should be installed, including Basic Authentication and Windows Authentication.

Required server configuration

To enable Snow Inventory clients to communicate with the server you need to specify and open a port (any) to be used (default port TCP 443).

D

Component Minimum requirements

Database requirements Microsoft SQL Server 2008, 2008 R2, or 2012

 Express editions not supported

Operating system Microsoft Windows Server 2008 x64, 2008 R2, 2012, or 2012 R2 Processor Dual Xeon 2.0 GHz Quad Core or equivalent

Disk configuration 540 GB disk space

 400 GB data files

 100 GB log files

 40 GB tempdb files

The Snow databases are highly IO-intensive. It is recommended to have at least 300 IOPS on the disk drives.

If mechanical disk drives are used, it is good practice to keep the data files, log files, and tempdb files on separate disk drives.

For information on Raid storage configuration - Storage Top 10 Best Practice

(http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc966534.aspx)

RAM 64 GB or greater

Network card 100/1000 Mbit Ethernet Required database

configuration

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SQL SERVER CONFIGURATION

 The only features that need to be installed are the Database Engine Service and the Management Tools - Basic. No additional services should be installed, since these consume system resources.

 Security mode should be Mixed, to allow both Windows Authentication and SQL Logins.

 Data files, log files, and tempdb files should be configured to use separate drives, as described in the table Database Server above.

 Case sensitive collations not supported.

The following settings should be set on the databases SNOWDB and SnowLicenseManager:

 Recovery model should be set to simple.

 The autoshrink option should be set to false. The Snow update job automatically shrinks the databases.

 We recommend to set Autogrowth to either 10% or at least 5000 MB to avoid too many auto-growth events.

MEMORY SETTINGS

For optimal performance, the maximum memory allocation should be set to 85-90% of the total RAM. This can be adjusted in the Management Studio by following this procedure:

1. In Object Explorer, right-click the server and select Properties. 2. Select the page Memory.

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PARALLELISM SETTINGS

For optimal performance, two settings related to parallelism also need to be adjusted in the Management Studio.

1. Select the page Advanced.

2. Under Parallelism, do the following:

 Set the Cost Threshold for Parallelism value to 50.

For assistance with fine-tuning of this value, please contact Snow Software.

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MAINTENANCE

It is required that backup of the two databases SNOWDB and SnowLicenseManager is performed on a daily basis. The recommended time of the day to do this backup is 2 hours prior to the scheduled data update job. It is highly recommended to store the backup on a different physical location than the database server itself.

TEST ENVIRONMENT