TM1 Forum

Hi,

Does anyone have experience running multiple PAW instances on the same server? If so, can you please share what configurations need to be edited in order to do so?

Thanks!

Out of curiosity. Why would you want to?

The easiest way to do this is to run two VMs on the same machine that have docker installed in each one. By doing that, each will get a different IP and have their own environment to run in. Trying to share multiple instances in the same docker host is going to be trouble.

I personally prefer Hyper-V on server environments and VirtualBox on development/laptop environments. VirtualBox is more friendly to turn off and remain off, whereas the hypervisor is always running in the background even when no VMs are running.

I have also found that PAW runs much faster on a linux OS than a Windows OS where you put docker on. In linux, it seems to take less resources as well and licensing is less of an issue. In windows, you must license the OS for each VM you create. While that is OK for server environments, it is a problem for development and testing where the VM is only up for a short period of time.

Hope that helps.

Bakkone wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2019 9:58 am Out of curiosity. Why would you want to?

Well load balancing ...
Horizontal scaling is a key advantage of containerization. And the containerization of Docker is the whole point of IBM going this route. It does seem a bit remiss that (at this point) there isn't any documentation from IBM on how to best horizontally scale Workspace.

(Of course the fact that Workspace has 4 independent content stores, each one also containerized is a spanner in the works as I don't believe there's a way for different PAW instances to share content stores. However I believe there is something coming which should handle live syncing between content stores)

But load balancing doesn't require a separate instance of PAW. That is supposed to be handled on the same instance, just, as you say horizontally scaled. Remains to be seen how that is actually accomplished

Two instances on the same server is more akin to a DEV and QA instances where the environments need to be the same, just silly to have bare metal with docker installed for one instance of PAW.

Bakkone wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2019 9:58 am Out of curiosity. Why would you want to?

IMHO, not being able to do this misses a major goal of application virtualization.. I believe one of the goal of Docker is to make virtualization more computing efficient by sharing the O/S host and financial efficiency by not having to pay for multiple operating system licenses.

tsw wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2019 5:47 pm IMHO, not being able to do this misses a major goal of application virtualization.. I believe one of the goal of Docker is to make virtualization more computing efficient by sharing the O/S host and financial efficiency by not having to pay for multiple operating system licenses.

If IBM had made PAW all within a single container, then I think what you are trying to do would be more feasible and more in line with what docker advertises as re-using it. But that is not the case. There are many microservices for one PAW instance, and that is where the issue lies.

You certainly CAN do it on a single docker host, but you better know what you are doing with all the different docker containers and know how to adjust the networking between them. You will have to get a deep dive on all the configuration scripts and such that set those networking parameters in each container. I have done some investigation on it but there are many and I don't know how flexible IBM has made it to just make a change here and there. Past experiences have shown that configuration files are abound and not easily updated.

I personally think it is not worth the effort; especially considering linux OS resource consumption is not much AND there are no licensing fees if you want to use a desktop version (Ubuntu etc.). Split them into to linux VMs and run the array of docker containers for each instance of PAW in their own environments.

If not...let me know, and I will buy some more Asprin stock.

blackhawk wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2019 5:57 pm
If IBM had made PAW ...

Right, IMO, IBM made a mistake architecting this application in Docker without keeping this in mind.
I was hoping someone on here who has more experience with Docker has done this already...
I have a really powerful physical server which can run multiple containers without having to pay for additional enterprise RHEL or Windows 2016 Server or VMWare licenses... IF only I can run multiple PAW instances on the same server

Thanks for your thoughts.

tsw wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2019 6:26 pm Right, IMO, IBM made a mistake architecting this application in Docker....

Don't get me started! Agreed, I think the thought was to split everything up so that they could expand to a swarm and try to blow out the footprint. However, there are only a few cases where this is truly needed and I think rather than making it easy for the majority, they set it up so that the minority could get what they wanted (big bucks in those minorities though).

So the rest of us have to deal with a more complex infrastructure.

If anyone does blaze this trail, I would be curious what is involved. I might try it someday when I have more time.

I suggest you log an RFE for PAW Local to support more than one environment (as it does on Cloud) -- i.e., dev / test/ prod tenants.

Upcoming PAW releases will run on orchestration engines (Swarm/Kubernetes).

dr.nybble wrote: ↑Wed Mar 20, 2019 3:11 pm I suggest you log an RFE for PAW Local to support more than one environment (as it does on Cloud) -- i.e., dev / test/ prod tenants.

Upcoming PAW releases will run on orchestration engines (Swarm/Kubernetes).

Does submitting a RFE require support's help?
it seems these new crop of first-level support are so keen to shut down any request and close the case in shortest amount of time...

blackhawk wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2019 5:57 pm I personally think it is not worth the effort; especially considering linux OS resource consumption is not much AND there are no licensing fees if you want to use a desktop version (Ubuntu etc.). Split them into to linux VMs and run the array of docker containers for each instance of PAW in their own environments.

Just to keep this thread current IBM have desupported Ubuntu for PAW, this means that if you go the Linux route you need to have a licence for both RHEL and Docker CE...