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IMS runs in a wide variety of environments, and supports a selection of = technologies to simplify management and installation in each of these. Befo= re you deploy an IMS system, we recommend that you review the options avail= able to help you determine how to get the best results, and the lowest TCO.=
You should consider the requirements on the system, both initially and a= few years down the line. Relevant factors include
This is usually the most significant factor in how to host a system. The= decision will affect the cost of storage, as well as the cost of subsequen= t growth and the limits on that. Try to evaluate how much storage you need = now, in 3 years and in 5 years.
The more people use IMS at once, the more powerful the system needs to b= e to support them. IMS is designed to be as efficient as possible at suppor= ting heavy access, but a whole team uploading and editing files all day wil= l require a system able to keep up with that demand. Conversely, even thoug= h you may have 10,000+ users, if only a handful are active at a time, then = there is no need to engineer an environment capable of handling them all at= once.
If most of your users are working in the same building, it may be best t= o run your IMS system there too. Local users can benefit from features like= Active Dir= ectory integration and the File server module. Heavy access from external users is better su= pported by running your IMS site from a facility with commensurate capacity= .
The best solution to recovering IMS fast after a failure is the IMS Sync Module. This= feature allows a second IMS instance to act as a backup, that can be activ= ated in moments. It also supports superior data protection through point-in= -time recoverable snapshots (by default, daily for a month), and provides a= n alternative to using a separate backup system, that may require additiona= l storage or licences to be provisioned.
Many businesses now have in-house virtualisation, private or hybrid clou= d platforms. Deploying IMS within this environment is a compelling option b= ecause it leverages existing investment in hardware and technologies, and c= an be managed in the same way as other systems.
For environments where the total storage used by virtualisation is large= compared with the expected size of the IMS, and the majority of usage is i= nternal (or the site has good network connectivity), this is a good option.= In instances where the IMS storage would represent 30% or more of the tota= l, it may be more cost-effective to use dedicated hardware.
Dedicated servers remain strong options for some workloads, and do not r= equire the pre-existing infrastructure of virtual platforms.
For on-site environments where storage demand is high, or there is no ex= isting virtualisation, dedicated servers continue to present strong options= . Once a server accounts for a whole tray of disks, it is almost invariably= more cost effective to deploy as direct-attached storage, and by default p= rovide more CPU and memory capacity than a typical virtual machine.
There is a continuing trend to use the cloud for application hosting. It= provides unparallelled flexibility and scalability - but it is not the bes= t fit for all uses.
The public cloud is excellent for testing, proof-of-concept, and applica= tions with elastic demand; however it is not well suited to storage-driven = uses like Digital Asset Management. For always-on, high storage use, the co= st is far in excess of other options.
Customers who need to reach external users, or with limited internal IT = can benefit from fully managed hosting with us.
Management by us as the software vendor has a number of advantages, as w= e know our software and systems the best. If you are outside Western Europe= , you should consider the responsiveness benefits of hosting nearby, and if= you want to use Active Directory integration or the File server module, you will need to run IMS local= ly.
Many companies specialise in hosting services. From a leased off-the-she= lf server, to a custom system in a colocation facility, there are a wide va= riety of options to suit many needs.
For overseas customers, external hosting avoids the IT needs of in-house= systems management, and provides geographic locality for best network perf= ormance.
There are two main methods for adding storage to IMS. There are a number= of factors that influence which you should use.
The IMS manager is a part of the product, and allows flexible, technolog= y-agnostic, hierarchical storage management.
The IMS Manager provides flexibility and visibility for a variety of sto= rage types. It transparently supports any type of storage that can be mount= ed in the underlying O/S, be it local, NFS, iSCSI, etc.. It also allows use= rs to gain the performance benefits of solid state disk (SSD) storage witho= ut the cost of a pure-SSD installation, by making it possible to use a smal= l, fast datastore for thumbnails, and a larger, slower one for original fil= es.
Automatic storage expansion is achieved by configuring the IMS system at=
the point of install such that storage additions are utilised without manu=
al system administration work.
See Automatically growing onto LVM storage for details of how to use=
this option.
This method is ideally suited to VM or SAN-based storage, as these allow= allocated capacity to be increased on demand. It also supports using extra= virtual disks attached to the VM, or LUNs to the same target transparently= , to allow growth past barriers such as the 2TB VMware VMDK limit. Once imp= lemented, the system only needs a reboot to start to use extra capacity.