Redpoint Data Management™ Documentation
Redpoint Data Management™ Documentation
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Recommended hardware setup

Overview

This topic provides recommendations about your hardware setup, depending on your needs.

"Small group" setup

  • Server OS: See the System Requirements for supported Server OS versions

  • Client OS: See the System Requirements for supported Client OS versions

  • CPU: 4-core Intel Xeon

  • RAM: 16GB +

  • Disk for persistent storage: SAN, RAID, or NAS

  • Disk for temp space: 2-3 independent rotating disks or 1-2 SSD

 "Mid group" setup

  • Server OS: See the System Requirements for supported Server OS versions

  • Client OS: See the System Requirements for supported Client OS versions

  • CPU: dual 4-core or 6-core Intel Xeon, latest generation

  • RAM: 32GB - 64GB

  • Disk for persistent storage: SAN, RAID, or NAS

  • Disk for temp space: 3-4 independent rotating disks or 2 SSD

 "Large group" setup

  • Server OS: See the System Requirements for supported Server OS versions

  • Client OS: See the System Requirements for supported Client OS versions

  • CPU: dual 8-core or 8-core Intel Xeon, latest generation

  • RAM: 64GB - 128GB

  • Disk for persistent storage: SAN, RAID, or NAS

  • Disk for temp space: 4-8 independent rotating disks or 3-4 SSD

General Notes

CPU performance

We prefer Intel over AMD, because we find the performance to be better; we've not benchmarked the relative performance, of say, a 12-core Opteron vs. a 6-core Xeon.

Regarding disk for temporary space

Use SSD if possible. As of this date we recommend the following SSDs for temporary disk: 

  • Intel 520 series

  • Samsung 830 series

  • Corsair Neutron series 

"Enterprise-class SSDs" are overkill for the purpose of temporary storage and are much more expensive. You may combine SSDs with larger/cheaper rotating media. If you do so, specify an "access" value of 4 for the SSD and 1 for the rotating media; this will preferentially use the SSD until it starts to fill.

Using rotating media for temp space

  • More volumes are better.

  • Multiple "dumb" disks are preferred over fewer redundant volumes.

  • Configure each disk as a separate drive letter (on Windows) or mount point (on Linux).

  • 7200rpm SATA drives perform OK, but 15k SAS is faster.

  • If temp spaces are allocated as SAN volumes, they should not share any physical disk spindles.

  • We find that RPDM runs well on two-socket (8-to-12 core) systems, and recommend adding hardware in those increments, as it is a good price/performance ratio. 

  • We also have customers using RPDM under VMware on virtualized systems, which gives them flexibility to easily upgrade CPU core and RAM allocation, and that also works well.

  • Because RPDM is networked, you can add additional Execution Servers to the same Site Server, and all Execution Servers will share metadata.

Performance tips and memory settings

  • For CPU-intensive tasks like CASS, more and faster CPU cores will improve throughput.

  • CASS and Geocoding need at least 2GB per running project, in addition to memory normally used for sorting, joining, etc.

  • For disk-intensive tasks like ETL, sorting, joining, summarizing, etc., more/faster temporary disk spaces will improve throughput, especially using SSD for temp space.

  • For record-matching and other "hybrid" tasks, both CPU and temporary disks are important.

  • Usually, set your projects to use as many "tool threads" as there are CPU cores.

  • Recommended memory per simultaneous project to be run:

    • Without CASS or Geocoding: 2GB minimum

    • With CASS or Geocoding: 3GB minimum.

    • For 100MM+ records in batch: add 2GB.

    • For multiple instances of CASS, Geocoder, SERP, etc.: add 1GB.

    • More/larger data sets and complex projects will benefit from additional memory