Farm Enviroment

[graham728]

Hi,

I'm trying to set up a small farm (two computers). I'm a little at a loss on how to achieve this.

Do you need to set both PC's under 'Configuration>Host' to 'use global media cache'? This is what I have done using a NAS drive.

So now I have both PC's set to 'user global media cache' using the same NAS drive shared folder. Both PC's have 'Windows Service' installed with 'Run as Application' box ticket.

I have a workflow on one PC I want the other to join, I right click on that workflow and go to 'Farming' and can only see the PC running the workflow and not the other PC. Both PC's are using the same network.

I've tried manually entering the host name of the other PC with no success.

Am I missing something?

Thanks.

[momocampo]

Hello Graham,

I just create one and it works very well. I noticed there are several issues with global media cache so I tried with local media cache and all is ok.
Install your FFastrans on your NAS, stay your cache on each local PC. Run your FFastrans from NAS from first PC, install service and be sure the log on for this service is with an administrator account. Do again with second PC and it will be ok
To resume : install FFASTRANS ON the NAS, ,configure it from each PC and select local cache.
Tell us if it's ok.
Cheers.

Benjamin

[graham728]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

On the second PC do I follow the same steps? or FFastrans installed locally on the second PC and cache set to local?

Also with adding hosts, do you need to manually type the name of the second PC, it shouldn't just appear in the list?

When you right click on the workflow and configure, the work root cache, this should be pointed to the NAS also?

[emcodem]

Hey graham,
in farm environment, ffastrans is not "installed" locally on any of the nodes. Make sure you only have ONE copy of ffastrans on a central location, e.g. \\server\share\ffastrans
All computers that start the ffastrans.exe from this central location are automatically part of the farm. In difference to other known "Farming softwares", there is no "controller" or similar. Each server in the farm has the same role: farm node.

Personally, i prefer when all nodes use the same cache, so i have these settings:

famr1.png (13.73 KiB) Viewed 12598 times

For start, you don't need to install as a windows service, just starting the application from central NAS on all involved servers should work fine.

[graham728]

Hi,

Thanks for that, I've now got both PC's showing up on Hosts under the Workflow configuration. Great! ... The only issue now is that the workflow isn't starting. I'm dropping a file into the watch folder and neither PC's are picking the file up. Both have the same UNC path to the watch folder etc.

[emcodem]

do jobs start when you submit a file manually through "right click" on a processor -> submit files?

[graham728]

Hi,

They don't process that way either, very odd.

the work folder on the worklow configuration, should that be set to default or pointed to the NAS also?

[emcodem]

Assuming you run as application instead of Windows Service, check:
Options->Configuration->Enable local workflow processing as application (at bottom)

good?

[graham728]

Hi,

That's done the trick.

I've noticed I can process one file at a time, if I try more I get the below error messages. AVS_Plugins and also having trouble removing the file at the end of the job.

Untitled.png (109.99 KiB) Viewed 12571 times

[emcodem]

I see a W:\ as source file, is this a network drive? In Farm environments you don't work with network drives but UNC paths instead.
Anyway, it should work if W:\ is available on both servers when you run as application. Is this the case?

Same for starting ffastrans from network drive ("Z:\"). Pleaes start ffastrans from UNC path (\\server\share\ffastrans) instead of network drive