Frequently Asked Questions - Workflow & Process Director Server Specification

The recommendations for a Workflow Director or Process Director Server are as follows:

Workflow Director Server Requirements

• Dual core Xeon CPU
• 2GB of RAM (or 4GB if database resides on the same server)
• 1GB free hard drive space
• Windows 2003 Server or above (32bit and 64bit)
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or above (including free MSDE or Express versions) or Oracle 10g or above
• Microsoft IIS (included free with Microsoft Server)
• .NET Framework 3.5 (free download)

This article will describe the key hardware and software recommendations for your server, to help you make the most of your new or existing Workflow or Process Director eForms and workflow system and minimise the possibility of problems in the future.

Understanding The Server's Function

The Workflow Director server not only stores all the forms and processes but is also responsible for rendering them for clients and running much of the script and processes behind them. Form routing, exports, eMailing and many other behind the scenes processing is done by the server. For this reason, it is important to pay careful consideration to both RAM, processor performance and hard drive speed.

Splitting the components of Workflow Director across multiple servers is also possible to increase performance, make management simpler and to help find and resolve performance bottlenecks. The two main components (processing & web server and database server) can be installed on to separate servers. On larger systems with many users or where performance is important, separating the process and web components from the database would be the recommended configuration.

Memory

A clean install of Windows 2003 Server will typically use less than the first 512MB of RAM for normal operation. This means that whatever is left can be used by database server and the Workflow Director server. On a clean, dedicated server, a total of 2GB (512MB for Windows, 1GB for SQL and 512MB for Workflow Director) should be OK for a simple installation. If other applications are running, such as Exchange or on-line de-fragmentation tools it is important to have more memory. Many system users or use of the complex processes will also require additional memory.

Multiple databases on one "instance" of SQL Server share memory but SQL can also have several isolated installations on the same server called "instances". Some applications such as the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator virus scanner management tool or Symantecs' BackupExec install their own instance of SQL to store information and statistics, which will require its own memory in addition to the Workflow Director instance!

SQL Server will automatically use all available memory, so if you have more than 2GB of RAM in your server and SQL is using up all available memory it doesn't necessarily mean that expanding your memory will result in a performance increase.

Hard Drives

Although the requirements suggest up to 1GB of hard drive space is required, even a full Workflow Director installation takes up less than 512MB. The additional space is required for storing the online form templates and the data retrieved from online form submission.

As storage is cheap and it is rare to see a hard drive smaller than about 120GB now, the space is rarely the issue but this doesn't mean the hard drives should not be given careful consideration. As hard drives are the only part of a server with physically moving parts, they are the slowest and often the bottle neck to performance. It is essential to have some form of fault tolerance on your servers hard drive configuration. For more information please see our Server Storage FAQ.

As the hard drive will be one of the main limiting factors on your servers performance it is well worth considering the latest high speed SAS drives.

Processor

With the right operating system, web server and SQL server version, full 64bit processor support is possible with Workflow Director, although this only increases the amount of RAM the system can utilise; it does not effect speed. The speed of the processor does have an effect on performance but for a simple systems any server class processor will be suitable. More complex installations will require multiple core processors, probably in the form of Intel Xeon processors but bear in mind it may incur additional licensing costs for Workflow Director to utilize additional cores.

Windows

We recommend Windows 2008 Server for Workflow Director. Any edition including Standard or Advanced will work as will both 32bit and 64bit versions. We recommend making sure all the latest updates are installed from the Windows Update web site.

SQL Server

Although Workflow Director can be installed on the free SQL Server Express Edition for small systems or testing, we recommend the full versions of SQL Server 2005 or 2008 (Workgroup, Standard or Enterprise) for larger systems, as not only does this increase the number of clients it can support but also makes backup, mirroring and general system maintenance much easier.

Summary

Whilst we can confirm Workflow Director will run on most standard server level hardware, it is impossible to provide specific confirmation here. A basic eForms server could run quite well on a Pentium 4, 3GHz server with 2GB of RAM and mirrored 80GB SATA hard drives but equally a server being accessed by fifty users, utilizing the workflow engine, would probably need a dual core Xeon with 8GB of RAM and SAS hard drives as a minimum.

ePC are here to help guide you through a Workflow or Process Director implementation, so please contact us and we can provide much more targeted guidance to ensure you get the best from your system.

Glossary