Description

A file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. NAS is specialized for serving files either by its hardware, software, or configuration.

In previous Sage X3 releases, scaling the system was possible by adding small inexpensive servers to the configuration rather than expanding a single expensive server. This resulted in having two different kinds of runtimes:

  • One main runtime managing the access to the folder hierarchy and executing X3 processes. This main runtime was located on the biggest server.

  • Additional runtimes used to execute X3 processes as well. These secondary runtimes were located on smaller servers.

This created two types of potential issues:

  • The main runtime was a single point of failure. As soon as this server stopped, no access to the folder resource was possible, so the system stopped. Managing redundancy on a server is possible but remains complex and costly.

  • The secondary server had a slower response time than the main one, highly depending on the quality of the network speed between the two servers.

Release 2021 R1 introduces the ability to have all runtimes acting as main runtimes, eliminating a single point of failure. It gives a better and homogeneous response time to all runtimes. This configuration is known as the application cluster.

The runtimes must have full control access to the folder hierarchy through a network path. You can set up a NAS to manage and ensure high availability.

The management console allows to set up the system.

The Syracuse load balancer manages the availability of the servers. At the administration level, runtimes can be specialized through tags to avoid web services consumption or batch tasks to slow down interactive sessions.