Ideasoft O3's Hardware & Software requirements

The purpose of this document is to provide information to define the hardware and software characteristics to install Ideasoft O3. It is for personel with infraestructure and technical knowledge, who should decide which is the best equipment to use for the producto instalation.

Document organization

The fisrt section sets the Hardware requirements fot the O3 instalation, explaining the necessary resources in detail.

The second section provides example metrics for specifical datamarts requirements. This metrics include hard disc storage used, and memory configuration. Note that it should be considered only as a reference. It should not be taken as a general definition of the resources used by each datamart.

Hardware Requirements

Environments classification

Ideasoft O3 is a very flexible producto that can be used on several scenarios with a variety of usage context. The product feets well to different scenarios due to it's advanced technical characteristics such as its technological platform, powefull multidimensional algoritms, and the design of a set of mechanisms to provide high scalability .

It is necessary to consider the breadth of scenarios to identify the environment for which the instalation should be designed, in order to give hardware recomendations. It is also recomended to consider which the purpose of the instalation is, as the instalation may be directed to high demand scenarios or ar the other end, for individual use in a laptop, or simple usage cases evaluation, etc.

Another element to consider is the scalability of the infrastructure. The hardware infraestructure goes forward in the direction of offering equipments with a high scalability capacity, that must be considered when making a recommendation for a specific purpose. The best investment in software and hardware is the one that suits best current needs and anticipates future ones. The over-sizing of a server in early stages will affect the ROI without providing a specific outcome. The continuing low price of hardware makes it appropriate, in cases where we foresee growth, opt for architectures with the ability to scale.

For these reasons, we will not only recommend affordable equipments but also the scalability characteristics that should be taken into account in specific scenarios. O3 is prepared to extensively exploit the capability of scaling the architecture of modern hardware both with respect to multiple cores, memory, high-speed networks and clusters.

It should also be taken into account the number of O3 components that will be in production. For example, the use of O3 Enterprise Portal or Web Customers will place greater demands on resources on the server computer, but lower in the clients ones. In contrast, an installation that uses only the server and clients multidimensional Desktop will require significantly fewer resources at the server (for example, reduced memory consumption on the server)

Another factor that must be analyzed is the pattern of use by users, such as the frequency of use, the distribution of use over periods of time and the sizing of the maximum load.

Finally, the amount of information actually stored in the Datamarts, the complexity of the multidimensional models and other factors directly dependent on the data from each installation will also influence the determination of the hardware requirements.

It is very difficult to do general recommendations to consider all these variables, so we have summed up in three cases the requirements of O3 with regard to hardware and software.

O3 Server

The following information explain in details the server machine requirements to run O3Server. Usually the datamers are build on this server, so the O3Builder component should also be installed on this computer. Its operation does not interfere with the server as it concentrates its use at hours of very low or null O3 Server activity. If so, it is possible to configure and license the use of O3Builder in other specific computer.

While there is no real requirement of having a dedicated server for this purpose, it is not recommended to share it with other programs for high consumption of memory or processor, such as a database engine.

O3Server Requirements

The server must be configured according to the volume of information and the maximum number of simultaneous users working on it.

The values showned on the following table, represent a guide to set de minimum requierements

(1) see the Example of Datamart Requirements for complementary disk usage information.

Operating System

As a general criterion, O3 can be run in any OS that supports a JVM 1.5 to date. Specifically, operating systems currently supported are:

• Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 2003
• Open Suse Linux 10.3, 11.
• Fedora 7
• Solaris 10.
• RedHat RHEL 5.x

Web Client

The Web Client is the O3 access through an Internet browser. It requires a computer able to run any of the Internet browser soported by O3. It is not necessary to install any O3 component on these computers.

The hardware requirements are those required in order to run efficiently the Internet browser of the user's preference. Consideration should be given that such requirements depend on the number of simultaneous applications that the user
uses for his job.

The Web Browsers supported by O3 are:

Desktop Client

The Client Desktop O3 is an application that is installed on the user's PC or laptop and can be used in two ways:

• Client/Server: The Desktop Client connects to an O3Server to work with Datamarts, Scorecards, and so on.
• Desktop Standalone: The Desktop Client executes queries to local Datamarts. These datamarts are stored locally or copied to the user's PC or Laptop through the Sincronizing process

Requirements for the Client/Server option:

Requirements for the Standalone option:

In this case you must contemplate the disk space required by the Datamarts.

O3 Studio

The requirements of O3's development environment are:

In this case you must contemplate the disk space required by the Datamarts.

Datamarts Requirements Example

Esta sección describe los recursos requeridos para casos de ejemplos particulares. Notar que estos valores deben ser utilizados solamente como referencia y no deben ser aplicados negligentemente.

Estos casos ofrecen referencias concretas que deben ser tomadas en cuenta para calcular el dimensionamiento de una instalación concreta.

Factores que Intervienen en el Tamaño de los Datamarts

Los Datamarts almacenan información proveniente de distintas fuentes. Durante el proceso de carga, O3 realiza un conjunto de optimizaciones y transformaciones, que tienen varias consecuencias:

• La información es altamente comprimida porque se utilizan representaciones compactas de la información (comparada con las Bases de Datos Relacionales, Archivos, etc.),
• Se realizan agregaciones, la información en el Datamart no presenta el mismo detalle que en las fuentes, por lo que por cada registro efectivamente almacenado en un Datamart es posible que se hayan cargado varios registros de las fuentes. Este factor contribuye también a la compresión de la información.
• Para acelerar la consulta, algunos Datamarts son diseñados para que realicen un conjunto de Pre-Calculos (redundancia controlada), que aumenta la información almacenada en el Datamart.
• Sólo una parte de la información de las Bases de Datos que actúan de fuentes de información para el Análisis prsenta Relevancia y es utilizado por los Datamarts.

Cómo regla general, los Datamarts muestran tasas de compresión de la información que almacenan, requiriendo menos espacio de almacenamiento que las bases de datos de partida.

Tamaño de Datamarts