Set Up Zephyr Data Center Cluster

About

Zephyr Data Center is a Zephyr Enterprise solution with horizontal scalability support for high availability, scalability, and performance. It involves deploying Zephyr Enterprise on multiple nodes, which are stateless engines where all the business logic resides, along with an external database and a shared folder as shown below:

The deployment components include the following: 

  • Load Balancer - balances the load across the cluster nodes.

  • Elasticsearch – a search engine deployed on the server node as a micro service or as a separate process in the virtual private network.  

  • Shared database – a shared database used by the nodes. Zephyr supports MySQL, MS SQL Server, and Oracle Database. 

  • Shared directory – a shared folder where attachments are stored. In a cluster environment, this folder must be shared with write permissions. Network-attached storage (NAS) and similar devices are supported.

It is recommended to have this clustered deployment behind a firewall.

Recommended Configurations

The deployment components may vary depending on the number of concurrent users who will work with Zephyr Data Center. There are three recommended configurations:

Configuration 1: Up to 100 concurrent users

Component

Number of Nodes

vCPU

System Memory

Application Memory

Storage

Component

Number of Nodes

vCPU

System Memory

Application Memory

Storage

Application

 

1 (single node)

4

 

16 GB

 

8 GB

 

350 GB*

Elasticsearch

Database

* Depending on the database size.

Configuration 2: 100 - 500 concurrent users

Component

Number of Nodes

vCPU

System Memory

Application Memory

Storage

Component

Number of Nodes

vCPU

System Memory

Application Memory

Storage

Application

2

4

16 GB

Min: 8GB
Max: 12GB

350 GB

Elasticsearch

1

4

16 GB

8 GB

350 GB

Database

1

8

16 GB

16 GB

350 GB*

Load Balancer

A load balancer to distribute load among the application nodes

Shared
Storage

Shared among the application nodes to store attachment files for Requirements, Test Cases and Executions

* Depending on the database size.

Configuration 3: 500 - 1500 concurrent users.
Recommended OS: Linux

Component

Number of Nodes

vCPU

System Memory

Application Memory

Storage

Component

Number of Nodes

vCPU

System Memory

Application Memory

Storage

Application

4

Min: 4
Recommended: 8

16 GB

Min: 8 GB
Max: 12GB

350 GB

Elasticsearch

3

4

16 GB

8 GB

350 GB

Database

1

Min: 16
Recommended: 32

32 GB

16 GB

350 GB*

Load Balancer

A load balancer to distribute load among the application nodes

Shared
Storage

Shared among the application nodes to store attachment files for Requirements, Test Cases and Executions

* Depending on the database size.

  • System Memory is the total memory allocated to the virtual machine.

  • Application Memory is the memory allocated to the respective applications running on the machine.

Requirements

Installation procedure

To install Zephyr Enterprise on cluster nodes, you need to perform the following steps:

1. Connect to an external database
2. Install & configure Elasticsearch
3. Install Zephyr Enterprise on your nodes
4. Set up a shared directory
5. Configure load balancer
6. Bring up the whole system

See Also

Upgrading Zephyr Enterprise
Support and Troubleshooting

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