Windchill has a multi-tier architecture that can be deployed in a configuration small enough to run on a single server (for small workgroup teams), as well as in a configuration as large and complex as a highly redundant clustered system serving thousands of end users on a global scale. Customers have configured their Windchill systems in a variety of ways to suit specific needs. The Windchill Architecture Overview Technical Brief describes reference configurations that can be leveraged by customers to derive their own specific Windchill architecture.

The single-tier configuration, also referred to as a monolithic configuration, is often the simplest installation and is typically reserved for development environments and very small customer implementations. In the single-tier configuration, one single physical machine is configured to host all of the required components for Windchill, including the Oracle or SQL Server database.

A two-tier (multi-tier) configuration, where the database and application server are separated, is the recommended configuration for a small to medium sized deployment. In the two-tier configuration, the Windchill application server and the database are located on two different physical machines, or on two virtual partitions in a large server-class machine. This separation allows more resources to be applied to each component for improved performance.