WorkflowGen Server Configuration and Scalability

WorkflowGen Scalability Features

Sessionless and stateless web application

> Totally compliant with load balancing and web farm architectures.

> Improves the web server memory usage

File data are stored in a local or a remote file system folder

> Optimizes the database size and database server CPU load.

> Reduces the network bandwidth usage between the web server and the database server

Basic Configuration (Development / QA environments)

Web Server and Database installed on 1 server

Pentium V Processor

Windows 2003 or 2008 Server (any version including R2)

IIS 6 or IIS 7 or IIS 7.5

2 Gb RAM

SATA Hard Disk with 40 Gb available

SQL Server 2005 OR SQL Server 2008 OR SQL Server 2008 Express OR Oracle 9+

Example of usage

500 potential end users

50 requests/actions per day

Recommended Configuration

Web Server

Xeon or Multi-Core processors

Windows 2003 or 2008 Server (any version including R2)

IIS 6 or IIS 7 or IIS 7.5

2 Gb RAM

High-speed hard drive array

Database server

Xeon or Multi-Core processors

SQL Server 2005 OR SQL Server 2008 OR Oracle 9+

2 Gb RAM

High-speed hard drive array

Example of usage

5,000 potential end users

500 requests/actions per day

High availability Configuration (Web Farm)

2 Web Servers in a Web Farm architecture

2+ Xeon or Multi-Core processors

Windows 2003 or 2008 Server (any version including R2)

2 Gb RAM

High-speed hard drive array (All WorkflowGen versions) OR

SAN (WorkflowGen Enterprise only)

Gigabit Ethernet

Database server

2+ Xeon or Multi-Core processors

2 Gb RAM

High Speed Hard drive array

Gigabit Ethernet

NAS/SAN Appliance (WorkflowGen Enterprise)

High-speed hard drive array

Gigabit Ethernet

Example of usage

10 000 potential end users

1,000 requests/actions per hour

Disk space usage

Disk space is related to the archiving of the forms when a process is closed.

• Full archiving: Form size x number of actions per day
• Archiving of form and data only: Form size x number of requests per day
• Archiving of data only: Data size x number of requests per day

Size of the database

The size of the database is related to the number of actions:

• 2kb x number of actions per day

Database and File Repository Growth

The growth of the database and the file repository content (for form archives, form state content,  and document attachments, if used) is directly related to the number of actions in a process, and the amount of data captured on the forms at each action (each step in the process).

The amount of data captured furthermore depends on if you are interested in capturing the data in ALL the actions in detail, or in capturing only the final copy of the data at the end of each process (the final result).  Capturing all action data will provide the ability to trace back in a very granular way to each step in the process to see the data entered at each step.  Typically this has an impact requiring about 3 to 10 times more disk space than capturing only the ending result data.  Note that even if granular form data in not maintained, WorkflowGen always provides the ability to see who took what step, at what date and time, during the process; only the form data content would be purged for previous steps before the final closing step in the process.

An approximation would be to multiply the number of processes launched, actions per process, and estimates of data capture on a yearly basis.

                Example with full data archiving:

                                Assumptions:

                                - 10 actions per process on average over all processes in production

                                - 10,000 process launches per year (x 10 = 100,000 actions)

                                - Typical average data stored in the database per action of about 3K

                                - Typical average form snapshot archive and state content per action of about 50K

                                - Assuming an average attachment size of 300K per request (some actions have no attachments)

                                Result:

                                Approximately 300 MB of database growth per year

                                Approximately 5 Gigabytes of file repository growth per year for the form archive and content

                                Approximately 3 Gigabytes of additional file repository for attachments

Example with limited data archiving:

                                Assumptions:

                                - 10 actions per process on average over all processes in production

                                - 10,000 process launches per year

                                - Typical cumulative one-time data stored at process end of about 5K

                                Result:

                                Approximately 50 MB of database growth per year

                                Approximately 500 MB of file repository growth per year for the form archive and content

                                Approximately 300 MB of additional file repository for attachments

                These results are examples only and vary greatly based on your specific requirements.

Note that WorkflowGen Enterprise Edition supports the storage of file data in the database. Should this option be selected in all processes developed, the file server disk space requirements will move to the database server.

Archive Server

The optional WorkflowGen Archive module (available with the Enterprise version of WorkflowGen) can offload the database and file repository of the production server(s) by moving closed requests on a regular basis to a different database instance and file repository.

The space requirements are the same as described above for this server, taking into account the archival intervals which will reduce the size of the production data and files and increase that of the archive data and files.