When you plan your server hardware requirements, consider the number of concurrent users to have access and the number of assets to be stored in the repository. Response time depends on the details of your specific use cases. For example, uploading a large file takes more time than displaying a web page.
If you use WebSphere Application Server, you can either choose to install a new WebSphere Application Server or use your existing version of that server. You can use either server with any database or other platform software.
You can also install Rational Asset Manager on a single server that runs WebSphere Application Server and a database, and use local disks for assets and indexing; however, that configuration cannot scale well beyond 200 concurrent users. To improve performance, at a minimum, use an external database server and file server.
For the greatest flexibility in environments with many users, install Rational Asset Manager on WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment cluster environment, which allows you to distribute the load across multiple servers and across multiple disks in various ways.
Rational Asset Manager requires Rational Team Concert. The Rational Team Concert application manages the lifecycle processes for assets in Rational Asset Manager. We include a limited version of Rational Team Concert that you can install and use, or you can extend an existing Rational Team Concert server application to work with Rational Asset Manager. For more information see Integrating Rational Team Concert with Rational Asset Manager.
The Rational Team Concert server application cannot be deployed as part of a WebSphere Application Server cluster. However, you can create a stand-alone application server. See Creating an application server instance for Rational Team Concert on a WebSphere Application Server distributed server cluster.
Rational Asset Manager storage is composed by two components: the database and the file system. The assets are stored in the file system and the metadata are stored in the database.
The amount of storage space you need for assets depends on the types of artifacts (files) you are storing in the repository; text documents and spreadsheets are relatively small, while bootable operating system images are larger.
As one example for planning how much storage space you might need, the repository for a 3-year-old enterprise deployment with 70,000 assets requires 10 GB of space for the database, and 250 GB of space for files.
Place the database, repository index, temporary folders, and assets directory on separate hard disk drives. Using multiple drives prevents certain operations, such as asset retrieval and indexing, from interfering with performance, such as browsing assets.
Rational Asset Manager requires two databases: one for asset and data storage and another for managing lifecycle processes, which is used by the included Rational Team Concert application. For best performance, place the database server application on a separate server and on a dedicated disk. To improve performance, place the database server on a separate physical computer from the application server and on a dedicated disk.
The size of the database for Rational Asset Manager depends on the size of assets and other repository activity, such as forums, tagging, and registered users. Metrics are recorded in the database for many user activities, such as searching and downloading. Even if you do not add assets to the repository, the database grows over time as user activity metrics are recorded. The size of the database increases in a linear fashion with increased repository usage.
The size of the database for Rational Team Concert depends on the amount of custom lifecycles that you add, and whether others are using Rational Team Concert as a project management and development tool.
The size of the index depends on both the size of the assets and whether the content of the assets is mostly text, which can be indexed, or binary content, which cannot be indexed. If you use large amounts of text and large asset files, the index size is large. The amount of disk space that the index needs depends on the type of assets, number of assets, level of user activity, and length of time that the repository has existed.
On a cluster, every node must have its own index folder that must be on a local hard disk drive for the server; the index folder for each server must not be a shared drive.
To manage users in a large deployment, you can use an existing LDAP or other custom user registry. Both WebSphere Application Server and Tomcat application servers support using an LDAP registry to manage access to the server.
Although Rational Asset Manager supports adding users from an external registry, such as LDAP or a custom registry, you do not need to use an external registry. You can use a file-based security system, or if you are using WebSphere Application Server you can use the user accounts database for your operating system.
If you plan to manually install onto an existing WebSphere Application Server that is configured for security, for example, using LDAP, reconfigure the application server for file-based security until the installation and configuration of Rational Asset Manager is complete.
File-based security is not intended for use in production environments.
When you plan for the initial platform size and for production environment upgrades, consider the relative system resources that are used by different types of operations. For example, operations through the Eclipse client consume more system operations than operations for the web client.
User actions, such as searching for, downloading, viewing, or submitting assets, require much more processing and memory resources than are needed for asset storage. As more concurrent users are added, you need more and faster servers.
For more specifics on tuning your system for performance, see Tuning the performance of Rational Asset Manager. To view concept diagrams of a simple and complex systems, see Deployment examples.
If you expect the repository to contain tens or hundreds of thousands of assets, several asset management operations, such as indexing, might require several hours. You might improve performance if you use data management and hard disk management techniques, such as a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) and disk striping. Disk striping involves dividing data into blocks and storing the data blocks on multiple partitions on multiple hard disk drives. For instructions to set up disk striping for your environment, see the documentation for your operating system. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, consider placing the repository index, assets, and database each on a different hard disk.
The Rational Asset Manager web application accesses the help application to deliver contextual assistance for pages, tools, and forms.
If you require users to authenticate (for example, through the application server or an external firewall) to access the Rational Asset Manager help application, you must install the Rational Asset Manager help application on the same server as the Rational Asset Manager web application.