AX1788

Back office support

Virtualization

We promote the use of virtualized servers for the Axiom Application Server and the Axiom Scheduler Servers. There are many benefits of virtualization, some of which are: increased control of multiple environments, reduced costs for hardware and energy through server consolidation, on-the-fly allocation of system resources, and more efficient utilization of IT resources.

A dedicated disk is required for the Axiom Database Server for performance and scalability. In all virtualized environments, the required disk subsystem throughput must be a minimum of 1000 IOPS. We can make specific recommendations in this regard and can assist you in benchmarking a virtual environment to assess the performance. Please contact us prior to deploying the Axiom Software solution in a virtual environment.

Data flow

Using a customer-provided SSL certificate, the Axiom Application Server will encrypt all traffic over port 443 between itself and the Axiom Clients and the Axiom Scheduler Servers. The Application and Scheduler Servers will connect to the Axiom Database Server over port 1433 for SQL Server; no other machine connects directly to the Database Server. The Application and Scheduler Servers will communicate with a customer’s internal SMTP relay server over a specified port (587 by default). During ETL processes initiated by a user or by a Scheduler Server, the Application Server will perform the acquisition of data from the source via a pre-configured connection, then send the resulting data to the Database Server.

Please note that Kaufman Hall does not support self-signed certificates for on-premise installations. The Axiom Software code does not explicitly prevent these certificates from working, however, Axiom Support will not provide assistance for any issues arising from self-signed certificates.

Load balancing and failover

Axiom Software supports failover and load balancing at the database and scheduler tiers to address high availability and scalability for mission-critical environments.

At the database level, industry best practices can be used to address redundancy for Microsoft SQL Server. It is recommended that you contact your database vendor and/or professional database administrator to discuss the appropriate strategy for your environment.

At an application level, the Axiom Application Server running in IIS may be configured for failover at the virtualization or hardware layer using appropriate hypervisor or hardware configurations for the single application server. Axiom Software does not support any network load balancer, nor does Axiom Support assist with configuration, maintenance, or troubleshooting of load-balancing hardware.

The Axiom Scheduler Servers are automatically load balanced by the Axiom platform. No hardware or network configuration is required for this feature.

Licensing

Customers are required to license all prerequisite software for use with Axiom Software. Contact the appropriate software vendor regarding your specific configuration.

Network

Connections from Axiom client workstations to the Axiom Application Server must be a minimum of 100Mb/s. If 100Mb/s performance cannot be achieved from a workstation or high latency is encountered to the application server, we recommend using Remote Desktop Services to access the application. A connection of 10Gb/s between the application server(s) and database server is recommended. A minimum connection of 1Gb/s is required between all servers in the Axiom Software environment.

Updates

We recommend applying all current Microsoft security patches for use with Axiom Software. All servers used for the Axiom Software installation must be fully up-to-date with Microsoft .NET Framework, up to the minimum required version (or higher).

Backup facility

All information related to the Axiom Software system is contained in the database. The database should be routinely backed up; there are no files that need to be included in routine backups.

Publisher certificate

Kaufman Hall provides a signed publisher certificate for the Axiom Software application. When installing the Axiom Application Server, the server must have Internet access in order to validate this certificate. If it is not possible to enable Internet access to the server, additional workarounds are available, as detailed in this Microsoft Support article.