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Software and hardware requirements

Before you install or upgrade the server, you must check the software and hardware requirements and complete the pre-installation tasks. The pre-installation tasks ensure you do not encounter issues when installing and configuring the necessary SDL LiveContent Architect software components.

Before starting an SDL LiveContent Architect installation, check the hardware, basic operating system setup, and third party software as required and qualified with for version of SDL LiveContent Architect. Focus on the preparation steps which should be verified or executed before installing SDL LiveContent Architect.

Hardware
The performance of SDL LiveContent Architect depends primarily on the CPU power and the I/O characteristics of the hardware. High CPU power is needed to allow the system to make calculations on-the-fly, for example, for publishing. The I/O performance largely influences the system’s speed to gather and assemble information from the database to serve user requests. SDL LiveContent Architect imposes no specific requirements for data storage, as it holds generic versions that become specific versions by calculation on a user's request.

Know that the hardware required for a specific SDL LiveContent Architect implementation depends on the specific requirements and settings of the project (for example, the number of concurrent users). The exact definition of the hardware requirements is typically done at the beginning of the project.

Database
The system requires one of the following. The supported version numbers are noted in Software compatibility.
  • A UNIX-based SDL LiveContent Architect database server running Oracle.

  • A Microsoft Windows SDL LiveContent Architect database server running Oracle or MS SQL Server, Standard or Enterprise edition

Also note the following requirements for the database server:
  • It is important that the system has enough storage available to host your data.
  • To be able to execute database transactions, the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC) settings of the database server have to match the ones on the application server. All servers require a reboot before these settings become active.

The database server may be on any platform supported by the database vendor. Hardware and platform requirements for the database server should be obtained from the database vendor. The specifications supplied by SDL LiveContent Architect should be checked against the specifications supplied by the database vendor for the current hardware on which it is installed.

Web and Application layer
Server operating system (OS) supported for this release is noted in Software compatibility.

The server can be on a single system however for performance reasons, it is advised to scale and have redundancy over multiple servers. The SDL LiveContent Architect System Architecture document helps you determine the setup. Due to the many setup variations, you may want to contact the SDL LiveContent Architect support team to discuss your specific setup.

The minimum server configuration: A recent quad core system(s) containing 8 GB of RAM or more. Virtualized environments are supported if they are guaranteed to behave like a Windows OS installed on a physical machine. If performance is, or becomes an issue, you are advised to use physical servers.

Storage demands: The consumers of storage are the actual installed SDL LiveContent Architect software components, the full-text-index collection, exported, and published content. Considering a normal documentation project, with an initial database reservation of 100 GB, the server should have at least 50 GB. The typical setup is two servers, one handling the synchronous operations and one server handling the asynchronous/background operations. Initially you can start with one server handling all operations; we suggest a dual CPU server. A second server can be added quite easily afterwards if load needs to be reduced on the primary server.