Application installation on stateless servers
The value of Image Streamer and stateless servers is the ability to deploy an OS volume in Image Streamer and the
operating system hosted in this OS volume can be run on any server. The Golden Image creation and stateless server
deployment process is straight forward with respect to OS installation, configuration, and deployment. However,
application installation and configuration on stateless servers require careful consideration.
NOTE: Application data, unless temporary for the session, is always stored on storage external to the compute module.
There are four possible locations for storing applications and their configuration files:
•
Option 1: As part of Image Streamer Golden Image
•
Option 2: As part of Image Streamer OS volume
•
Option 3: Compute module local storage
•
This section explores the requirements for an application to be installed in each of these four locations.
Considerations for application installation
• With Image Streamer, the OS is separated from the compute and memory resources by an iSCSI connection. The iSCSI
connection has a default 2.5 Gb/s requested bandwidth and a maximum bandwidth of 10 Gb/s or higher. So the
performance of data intensive applications, OS, CPU, and memory applications may be impacted. Also, the OS
interactions with CPU, memory, and swap files will place a load on this bandwidth. Hence, the recommendation is that
the requested bandwidth that is specified in the HPE OneView server profile is increased to a level that will
accommodate the bandwidth requirements of the OS and applications. Since the bandwidth requirements are typically
unknown, the best practice is to increase the requested bandwidth to the maximum bandwidth allowed.
• Local storage SATA drives typically have 6 Gb/s bandwidth.
• HPE Synergy D3940 Storage Module has 12 Gb/s bandwidth, but may only function at 6 Gb/s with some drives. For
• External NAS and SAN storage can vary depending on the network adapters, configuration, and traffic.
• The number of compute modules in your setup
NOTE: If Hewlett Packard Enterprise provides a Reference Architecture (RA) or a Reference Configuration (RC) for your
application, those guidelines must be followed unless they are not practical for your environment.
Option 1: As part of Image Streamer Golden Image
If the application meets any or all the following requirements, it is recommended to be installed prior to the Golden Image
creation.
• Every deployment of the Golden Image requires the concerned application.
• The application installation process, excluding the post installation configurations, does not require personalization for
every Golden Image deployment.
Application installation on stateless servers
37