Enterprise Administration > Implementing Windchill ESI > Implementing Windchill ESI in an SAP Environment > Hardware and Network Sizing
Hardware and Network Sizing
Before installing yourWindchill ESI system, consider the recommendations and suggestions for hardware and network sizing outlined in this section.
Hardware Sizing: Physical Servers
The following table lists the hardware requirements for running Windchill ESI. The first row of this table lists the minimum server hardware requirements recommended by both PTC and TIBCO, assuming that all components are installed on the same physical machine and the machine is used exclusively for Windchill ESI.
Components
Free Disk Space
RAM
All TIBCO Components
3 GB
1.3 GB
TIBCO BusinessWorks
400 MB
512 MB
TIBCO Administrator
500 MB
1 GB
TIBCO Adapter for SAP
400 MB
512 MB
TIBCO EMS
1 GB
1 GB
The preceding table also lists hardware requirements if the components are installed on separate servers. Since TIBCO's architecture is very flexible and highly scalable, you can deploy all the EAI software components on a single physical server or separately on different servers. If you are a large, multi-national organization, you might consider installing BusinessWorks, Adapter for SAP EMS Server, each on different servers traversing Wide Area Network (WAN) links, and including fail-over servers for high availability. Also, you can deploy adapter instances on multiple servers to facilitate concurrent product structure data-publishing transactions.
While following these recommendations, keep in mind that these are only rough guidelines. Proper hardware sizing involves not just using technology but also practical, field experience. We encourage you to work carefully with your systems integrator to determine your unique business requirements and to take into account factors such as your site location, anticipated data volumes, and high availability requirements so you can adjust the hardware sizing accordingly. We strongly recommend you first test the performance of the integrated solution to identify bottlenecks and to make appropriate adjustments before you start usingWindchill ESI in a live production environment.
Network Sizing
The sizing of Local Area Networks (LAN) and Wide Area Networks (WAN) connections between theWindchill ESI components depend entirely on anticipated data volumes. You should consider how frequently you will be publishing product structure data from Windchill to the distribution targets, and the data volumes of these publishing activities. Consider the following network links to determine a network sizing strategy.
Network Link
Network Sizing Consideration
EMS connection between:
• Windchill and the TIBCO EMS Server
• TIBCO EMS Server and BusinessWorks
Since multiple small handshaking and acknowledgement XML messages are exchanged, sizing activities should focus on the relatively large ESIResponse messages issued by Windchill for each product data publishing activity. Each of these XML instances contains all of the CN, BOM, part, document and manufacturing objects data to be published to the distribution targets in a single, composite message.
TIBCO Rendezvous messaging within the BusinessWorks
Rendezvous messages traverse networks using a proprietary protocol based on UDP and occasionally TCP. Generally, the defaultWindchill ESI and TIBCO messaging settings should provide adequate performance and work out well for you. However, using broadcasting protocols might cause performance concerns for network administrators. TIBCO provides a number of alternatives to alleviate these concerns. Refer to the TIBCO Rendezvous Administration manual for further information.
Rendezvous connection between BusinessWorks and the adapters distribution targets
Windchill ESI sends only a subset of the data from the original Windchill composite XML message to the distribution target adapters. Typically, the product structure is created in the distribution targets on a part-by-part or object-by-object basis. In other words, the BusinessWorks interface with Windchill is high-volume, low frequency, while the BusinessWorks interface with the distribution target adapters is low-volume, high-frequency.
Connection between the adapters and the distribution targets
These connections are typically TCP-based. As a general rule, the network traffic load between BusinessWorks and the adapters is less than the load between the adapter and the distribution targets. Therefore, when possible, we recommend co-locating the adapters and distribution targets on the same LAN.
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