Hardware requirements for Pathfinder

[markus]

Hi.

What hard- and software do i need to run pathfinder server best?

Regards

Markus

[DanBays]

While the minimum specifications are listed in the manual, I recommend using a 2.4 Ghz or greater PC with 1 Gig of Ram and Windows Server 2003 for the Pathfinder Server. These days you are not going to be able to get much smaller than a 40 Gig hard drive which is plenty. PathfinderPC Server generally uses very little hard drive space, though if you turn on logging and depending on the log settings you choose, the log files can get pretty large and should be cleaned out periodically.

The bigger design question becomes how many NIC cards you need in the machine. In general for a single Stand-Alone Pathfinder Server, I recommend 2 Nic cards. This allows you to put one in a business network and one in the Axia network, thereby allowing copies of PathfinderPC Client or Mini to be run on machines in the business network without opening up a direct link between the two networks. The Pathfinder PC Client and Mini software communicates across the business network with Pathfinder Server which then sends the appropriate commands to the Axia equipment on the Axia network.

However, PathfinderPC Server can also be clustered with the purchase of an additional server license. This allows you to run 2 servers, and if one fails or needs to be taken offline for maintenance, the other takes over automatically. For this scenario I recommend using 4 NIC cards in each server. 1 for business, 1 for Axia, and 2 that are crossover connections between the two servers. In a cluster it is of the utmost importance that the clustering communications channels be maintained. If this channel goes away, then the servers will not be able to negotiate which one should be handling events, and duplicate events can fire. Therefore since the whole point of a cluster is redundancy, I recommend making the inter-cluster communications NICs redundant as well and devoting 2 Nics in each machine specifically to that purpose.

Hope that answers the question:


Oh - and by the way - How many roads must a man walk down? 42 of course! Or was it - what is 6x7?

[markus]

Yea, that was all i needed.

Now i would prefer to connect pathfinder only to the axia-network and access it trought the firewall that connects both business- and axia-lan. that should be possible.

what is mini? never heard about it.

Regards

Markus

While the minimum specifications are listed in the manual, I recommend using a 2.4 Ghz or greater PC with 1 Gig of Ram and Windows Server 2003 for the Pathfinder Server. These days you are not going to be able to get much smaller than a 40 Gig hard drive which is plenty. PathfinderPC Server generally uses very little hard drive space, though if you turn on logging and depending on the log settings you choose, the log files can get pretty large and should be cleaned out periodically.

The bigger design question becomes how many NIC cards you need in the machine. In general for a single Stand-Alone Pathfinder Server, I recommend 2 Nic cards. This allows you to put one in a business network and one in the Axia network, thereby allowing copies of PathfinderPC Client or Mini to be run on machines in the business network without opening up a direct link between the two networks. The Pathfinder PC Client and Mini software communicates across the business network with Pathfinder Server which then sends the appropriate commands to the Axia equipment on the Axia network.

However, PathfinderPC Server can also be clustered with the purchase of an additional server license. This allows you to run 2 servers, and if one fails or needs to be taken offline for maintenance, the other takes over automatically. For this scenario I recommend using 4 NIC cards in each server. 1 for business, 1 for Axia, and 2 that are crossover connections between the two servers. In a cluster it is of the utmost importance that the clustering communications channels be maintained. If this channel goes away, then the servers will not be able to negotiate which one should be handling events, and duplicate events can fire. Therefore since the whole point of a cluster is redundancy, I recommend making the inter-cluster communications NICs redundant as well and devoting 2 Nics in each machine specifically to that purpose.

Hope that answers the question:


Oh - and by the way - How many roads must a man walk down? 42 of course! Or was it - what is 6x7?

[DanBays]

PathfinderPC Mini is an application that is included with the PathfinderPC product.

With the Pathfinder product you can create custom user panels using a tool called panel designer. These panels consist of buttons, labels, and graphics. The controls on these panels can then interact with the server to make routes, scene changes, display statuses, and a whole myriad of other tasks, and can be as simple or as complex as you need them to be. These panels are then available in the Pathfinder client for your users to open, and provide a simple user interface for them to do day to day tasks.

PathfinderPC Mini is a small application that will display a single user panel defined in its configuration file. This allows you to create a user button panel, and make that panel the only interface a user has to the system rather than giving them all of the power of the PathfinderPC Client application. When you start PathfinderPC Mini it gets the panel from the server and displays it as its own stand-alone application.