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Changing to a Split/Distributed Deployment after a Full Install

Former Member
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My company is preparing to upgrade to BI Platform 4.1 SP4. We have completed a Full Installation on two host servers (BOEHOST1, BOEHOST2) that have been clustered. We have since decided to go to a Distributed Implementation and have obtained two systems that will act as Web Application Servers (WAS01, WAS02). We've successfully completed 'Web Tier' Installations (Tomcat only with no BI Services) on WAS01 and WAS02 using the cluster name of the host servers.

Here's where the problem is:

It appears you can only access the CMC and BI Launchpad through WAS01 and WAS02 when the Tomcat Services are started on the BOEHOST servers. I am assuming that this would not have been the case if we would have installed the host servers using the Custom Installation (unchecking Tomcat, of course). If I shutdown the BOEHOST1 Tomcat service, I have to enter BOEHOST1 as a server to enter CMC or BI Launchpad from WAS01 or WAS02.

Mind you, my problem may actually be with the cluster itself.  Before I begin a thorough examination of the cluster configuration,  however, I thought I would present this question:

Is it necessary to completely uninstall BI Platform from your host servers if you made a Full Installation (BI Services and Web Tier/Tomcat on one host) and you wish to change to a Distributed Installation (BI on one host and Web Tier/Tomcat on another)?

Thanks in advance,

M. Ingersoll

Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

cbethune
Participant
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you don't need to completely uninstall or remove the Tomcat servers for that matter, although it would free up some drive space. 

In fact many people will stay with a single system internally and add another Tomcat instance to act as an extranet portal.  It's a very useful model if you want to offer reports to your customers in addition to your business.  Point here is that you can have a whole farm of web servers if need be.

If it's performance you are after with the distributed model, I would recommend you consider the Apache split that has made available.  It definitely gives a noticeable boost in performance.

First of all are you only breaking off the Tomcat?  If so, then you are not clustered at this point, just distributed.  Now if you are breaking out to multiple nodes with multiple CMS servers on multiple hosts then yes and keep reading below.

Seems more like you need to cheek your platform services properties file under webapps\BOE\custom on the two new systems to make sure it has the cluster name and the servers belonging to that cluster.  Also don't forget to open ports 6400/6410 bidirectionally if there is a firewall in the middle.  Many organizations have internal firewalls in addition to those going outside.  It depending on what apps you plan to use you may need to open others.

BI4 is a very scalable platform...you can have a small one server does all (small is a relative term) or a multi-host, multi-site deployment and scale the individual servers under your CMS out to a whole server farm.  This would be overkill in most situations but I am the sick type of individual that would have a blast building out a 12 host BI Platform farm.

Former Member
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Thanks for the response, Chris.

You hit the nail right on the head! While I had configured most of the ".properties" files, I neglected to complete the PlatformServices.properties file. Sure enough, configuring it with the cluster name and associated server names did the trick.

And as an extra note, we are planning to install Apache to Split the Web Tier. We just wanted to make sure we could separate the Web Tier from the Processing Tier after having completed an installation. BI Platform does show great flexibility.

Once more, thanks for your help!

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