The Insight environment uses one or more application workstations to perform automated, asynchronous processing of system and user-defined Actions. In other words, to deploy inResponse services.
Wide Area Network (WAN) considerations
It is sometimes necessary to deploy a task worker in a WAN environment. Some things to consider when making this decision include the following:
- Consider deploying an application workstation used for printing on the same local network as the printer(s) that it sends reports to. This can improve printing response time for reports with smaller data sets because only the Inresponse task string and SQL data travels over the WAN—not the entire print stream.
- Deploy application workstations that will work with large data sets in such a way that they have fast network access to the Database Server and File Server. Inresponse functions, such as 2020 Construct processing, will benefit greatly by having the fastest possible access to these resources. Usually this means installing these workstations on the same local network as the other resources.
Miscellaneous recommendations
The following list of miscellaneous recommendations concerns the installation and deployment of application workstations:
- Keep application workstations dedicated to their main purpose. In other words, do not use the same computer for other purposes, especially as Insight clients. Running other applications on these workstations not only affects performance of key functions, but can also introduce unnecessary interruptions of processes if the workstation crashes or if it needs to be restarted for other reasons.
- Do not configure your database server to also be an application workstation. For the relatively small cost of an application workstation, it is money well spent to ensure that both the SQL Server and the application workstation have a dedicated set of resources. This is a consideration for performance and for fault tolerance because you do not want problems with one system to negatively impact the other.
- If possible, a 1 Gb/sec connection to the Database Server provides better performance for larger reports and grid results.
- If you are using the 2020 Construct Processing Inresponse function, the Memory Threshold (mb) Setting value sets a memory limit (in megabytes) that, when exceeded, causes the function to restart the underlying AutoCAD and 2020 Construct process. Because of the time required to restart AutoCAD, Cyncly recommends that you set this limit as high as is feasible on the application workstation running the function. This minimizes the amount of order line processing time because more order lines can be processed before having to restart AutoCAD and 2020 Construct. The Memory Threshold (mb) Setting is defined in the Engineering Automation module > 2020 Construct tab of the System Configuration form.
- If you are using 2020 Construct, disable the Calculation option. To do this, open the Construct Options dialog box, select the Order tab, and clear the Calculation check box
OR
Edit the imos.ini file and change SAVE_IDBWG=1 to SAVE_IDBWG=0.
NEXT TOPIC: Managing Insight Clients