Variables Affecting Hardware

Many factors affect the amount of memory and processing power required by a particular Host Integration Server 2004 computer. The major variables are:

  • Number of clients served.

    This is the most important variable affecting hardware requirements. If you support large numbers of client computers, you need not only servers that have ample memory and processing capacity, but also fast, powerful LAN adapters. Such LAN adapters include their own processor and memory, and can use direct memory access (DMA). Without such adapters, the network interface can become the bottleneck when many clients are being supported. Similarly, SNA adapters must be powerful enough to keep pace with the communications load.

  • Demand generated by the clients (constant, intermittent, heavy, light).
  • Number of Host Integration Server 2004 computers configured to work together within a particular subdomain.

    This is affected by the configuration of the Host Integration Server 2004 installation: centralized, branch, or distributed. Host Integration Server 2004 computers in a centralized or a distributed configuration can provide load balancing; they can each take a share of the connection load. Server computers in a branch configuration are separated by wide area network (WAN) links, and cannot readily provide load balancing because of the communication delays involved.

  • Use of data encryption between clients and servers.

    Data encryption is not dependent on the number of clients being served but on the number of messages that are encrypted. As the number of transactions per second increases, the load on the CPU increases. Using 128-bit encryption instead of 40-bit encryption also increases the load on the CPU.

  • Additional network services (file sharing, database access, mail service, and so on) provided by each server computer.

    It is difficult to predict exactly how much processing power is required to run multiple server applications. In many cases, your own requirements to meet a certain level of response time or transaction rate will indicate the specific hardware requirements for your environment.

See Also

Estimating Hardware Demands

Best Practices

To download updated Host Integration Server 2004 Help from www.microsoft.com, go to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=29507.

Copyright © 2004 Microsoft Corporation.
All rights reserved.
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