Planning your deployment architecture

Our dependence on computers within the workplace is clear. Present on every desktop and commonplace for all business travellers, we have come to depend on easy and reliable workstation access to deliver the applications, tools, and communication mechanisms that improve our performance. In recent years most organisations have invested heavily on enterprise software systems and the number of workstations (both fixed and laptop) can be counted in the thousands and tens of thousands. While these workstations have driven higher performance and productivity, the number of systems, their complexity and diversity, their geographic distribution, and the need for regular upgrades and maintenance, have outpaced the capacity of most IT support departments.

Preparing your architecture

Before you can launch the installation and rollout process you should create an architectural schema of your network, that is, define amongst others the points listed following. After you have followed the example installations and operations in this booklet you will certainly find more questions to be answered before you can make the complete installation of your network.

The architecture will obviously look very differently depending on the size of your company, that is, is it a small company, with everybody, that is the whole system, being located in the same building, is it a company operating on several sites within one country or even one continent, or is it a company with sites and locations all around the world:

• Define, if your database will be on the master server. If you have a large network we recommend you use different machines.
• Define the basic architecture of you network. There are three different types:
  • A smaller number of relays which are each managing a large number of clients. This scenario asks for quite powerful relays to guarantee a performant operation.
  • A larger number of relays managing a smaller number of clients each. In this case the master server needs to be very powerful and your network must have a good and fast performance.
  • Super master architecture
• Define the relays on your remote sites, we recommend you use one relay per site, a site being in this case a physically independent entity like a building,
• Define the maximum number of clients per relay: this number may vary depending if the relay is a dedicated relay, meaning it will only be used as a relay and does not serve for any other tasks, or if it is not dedicated, i.e. a normal client in your network. For a dedicated relay we would recommend a maximum number of 2000 clients and for a normal one, not more than 500. Also, for a site relay we would always recommend to use a dedicated relay.
• Plan for growth for at least one year ahead, preferably for two years. This will avoid costly reconfiguration later on.

The points listed here are not an exhaustive list of all the questions appearing when you create your BMC Client Management architecture, they are supposed to give you an entry point in the complexity of this task, as well as the recommendations made. They are only intended as guidelines. If you have any question or are in doubt please contact the BMC Software support.