Microsoft Application Center - Supported Configurations

Microsoft Corporation

Application Center 2000

The Web application deployment and management tool

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Overview

This document provides information about supported configurations, sizing, and functionality for Microsoft Application Center 2000 (AC) Service Pack 2 (SP2) deployments. Updates to this document will be posted to the Web at https://www.microsoft.com/applicationcenter/

Application Center 2000 makes it easy to build, manage and monitor web applications and clusters. AC was designed with specific scenarios in mind and under which it performs very well. However, due to the nature of how software is utilized, we are finding customers that are utilizing AC in environments or situations where it was not designed to run. This supported configuration guide is designed to improve the success of customer deployments of AC.

On This Page

Support Matrix
Supported Installation Combinations
Scalability
Networks
Localization/Globalization
No Support List

Support Matrix

The following table lists supported operating systems for AC SP2.

Supported Installations of Operating Systems (AC SP2)

Operating system

Cluster controller or member

MMC Console

Web Console

Windows NT 4.0 SP4 or later

 

accon01

 

accon01

 

accon02

Windows 2000 Professional SP1

 

accon01

 

accon01

 

accon02

Windows 2000 Professional SP3 or later

 

accon01

 

accon02

 

accon02

Windows 2000 Server SP1

 

accon01

 

accon01

 

accon02

Windows 2000 Server SP3 or later

 

accon02

 

accon02

 

accon02

Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP1

 

accon01

 

accon01

 

accon02

Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP3 or later

 

accon02

 

accon02

 

accon02

Windows 2003 Server, Standard Edition

 

accon02

 

accon02

 

accon02

Windows 2003 Server, Enterprise Edition

 

accon02

 

accon02

 

accon02

Windows 2003 Server, Web Edition

 

accon02

 

accon02

 

accon02

Windows XP Professional

 

accon01

 

accon02

 

accon02

Windows XP Professional SP1

 

accon01

 

accon02

 

accon02

Windows XP Home Edition

 

accon01

 

accon01

 

accon02

Note: Setup does not specifically halt installation on any unsupported platforms.

Minimum Hardware Requirements

To use AC SP2, you must have:

  • Computer with 400 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible CPU, minimum

  • 256 MB of RAM, minimum (more memory improves performance).

  • 110 MB of available hard-disk space for the full server installation, or 20 MB for the Administrative client installation (additional space is required for site content and databases)

  • CD-ROM drive.

  • Super VGA with 800x600 or higher-resolution monitor.

  • Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device.

  • 10 MBPS network connection.

Test Hardware Utilized

The scalability tests for the large replication tests (10 GB and 50 GB):

  • 4 proc 550 MHz

  • 768 RAM

  • Raid 10 disks with 100 GB logical drives for these tests.

  • CD-ROM

  • Mouse: Yes, Microsoft compatible

  • Network: 2 NICs, 100 Mbps each on different subnets.

The scalability tests for the other replication tests:

  • 2 proc 800 MHz (1 proc disabled for RF)

  • 512 MB RAM

  • HD: No RAID 12 GB partitions for this test.

  • Mouse: Yes, Microsoft compatible

  • Network: 2 NICs, 100Mbps each on different subnets.

Minimum Software Requirements

To use AC SP2, you must have:

  • Operating system:

    • Microsoft Windows 2003 Server, Standard Edition

    • Windows 2003 Server, Enterprise Edition

    • Windows 2003 Server, Web Edition

    • Windows 2000 Server

    • Windows 2000 Advanced Server

Note: For the appropriate Service Pack requirements, refer to the Supported Installations of Operating Systems table earlier in this document.

Supported Installation Combinations

This information describes which versions of AC and the underlying operating systems are supported. Anything specifically not stated is not supported.

AC versions:

All cluster members must be at the same AC service pack level.

Mixed Version Deployments:

All cluster members must be running on the same OS and OS service pack level. For example it is unsupported to have Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 servers in the same cluster.

There is no support for deploying between AC servers that are on different versions of AC or different versions of OS.

Deployments from any AC cluster to another AC cluster are only supported when the service pack version of AC is equal between the clusters

Deployments from any AC cluster to another AC cluster are only supported when version of Windows (Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003) is the same between the clusters

Scalability

Replication

AC replication technology is able to deploy three distinct sets of information in a seamless fashion, that of content, configuration and components.

Typically replication performance is affected by the following variables:

Size of the content

Number of individual files and directories

Number of IIS web sites and virtual directories

Number of targets for a deployment

Speed and RAM of source and target servers

Throughput of the network

HTTP or CLB load

General Replication Supportability Limits

The table below illustrates supportability limits. Deployments with configurations that exceed the specifications below may work, however, they are unsupported. Furthermore, these limits can not be combined, for example, deploying 50 GB of content to 11 targets is not supported.

Deployment Configuration

Limit

Maximum targets for a single deployment

11 targets

Maximum number of files in a deployment

2 million

Maximum number of files per directory

9000

Maximum number of combined sites and vdirs

500

Maximum amount of content for a deployment

50 GB

Maximum number of simultaneous deployments

11 deployments

Because the amount of data transmitted impacts the number of targets it can be deployed to, the following table illustrates the supported combinations of targets and amount of content:

500 MB

1 GB

10 GB

50 GB

1 target

 

accon03

 

accon03

 

accon03

 

accon03

2 targets

 

accon03

 

accon03

 

accon03

 

accon03

3 targets

 

accon03

 

accon03

 

accon03

 

accon03

4 targets

 

accon03

 

accon03

 

accon03

 

5 targets

 

accon03

 

accon03

 

accon03

 

6 targets

 

accon03

 

accon03

 

 

7 targets

 

accon03

 

accon03

 

 

8 targets

 

accon03

 

accon03

 

 

9 targets

 

accon03

 

 

 

10 targets

 

accon03

 

 

 

11 targets

 

accon03

 

 

 

Maximum Configuration by Resource Type

Application Center supports deploying a wide variety of resource types that make up todays web and application tier applications. The table below illustrates the supported maximum for each resource type. Note: the combination of resources will affect the absolute maximum as depicted in the chart above.

AC Resource Type

Maximum

Files and Directories

50 GB and 2 million files and 9000 files per directory

Web Sites and Virtual Directories

500

Registry keys

500

DSNs

500

COM+

200

.Net Global Assemblies

1000

Automatic Synchronization

It is not guaranteed that Automatic synchronization will in fact deploy every change. Due to limitations in the NT eventing infrastructure, it is possible that file change notifications may be dropped or missed. This one of the reasons periodic synchronizations always are enabled with Automatic synchronization.

Periodic synchronization must not be configured to an interval that is so frequent that it would cause simultaneous synchronization jobs. If it is configured as such, it would violate the maximum number of concurrent deployment jobs illustrated in the general supportability limit table above.

Component Load Balancing

Component Load Balancing (CLB) is a feature that provides dynamic load balancing for COM+ applications.

Load balancing of up to 200 COM+ components is supported with CLB. Load balancing of more than 200 components may work but is unsupported.

Request Forwarding

The request forwarder is used for session coherency. It sits between the client and the application and ensures that client requests are sent to the correct cluster member. This load-balancing feature ensures that clients maintain session state. If a client has established a session with a specific member and if subsequent requests are load balanced to the wrong member, the request forwarder routes the requests to the appropriate member.

To be supported, the amount of web traffic that is actually request forwarded, i.e. session on the wrong member server, must be less than 10% of the overall traffic being load balanced across the Application Center cluster.

Cluster Services

12 nodes per cluster limit

All cluster members must be at the same AC service pack level

All cluster members must be running on the same OS and OS service pack level. For example it is unsupported to have Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 servers in the same cluster.

Networks

Application Center does not support running clusters or deploying across slow networks. AC was tested on a minimum of 100 MB Ethernet. While slower networks may work, this is an unsupported configuration.

Localization/Globalization

Localization/Globalization Support

AC itself has been localized and is shipped in English and Japanese only. AC is also globalized and has been tested on multiple localized operating systems.

Supported Languages: Operating Systems

The table below indicates the operating system support that AC SP2 can be installed and used on any of the languages that are marked with a checked box.

Language

Support

Language

Support

Arabic

 

accon04

Hungarian

 

accon04

Brazilian

 

accon04

Italian

 

accon04

Bulgarian

 

accon04

Japanese

 

accon02

Chinese (Simplified)

 

accon04

Korean

 

accon04

Chinese (Traditional)

 

accon04

Latvian

 

accon04

Chinese (Hong Kong)

 

accon04

Lithuanian

 

accon04

Croatian

 

accon04

Norwegian

 

accon04

Czech

 

accon04

Polish

 

accon04

Danish

 

accon04

Portuguese

 

accon04

Dutch

 

accon04

Romanian

 

accon04

English

 

accon02

Russian

 

accon02

Estonian

 

accon04

Slovak

 

accon04

Finnish

 

accon04

Slovenian

 

accon04

French

 

accon02

Spanish

 

accon04

German

 

accon02

Swedish

 

accon04

Greek

 

accon04

Thai

 

accon04

Hebrew

 

accon04

Turkish

 

accon04

accon02 IS supported on the relevant language.

accon04 IS NOT supported on the relevant language.

No Support List

  1. There is no support for 64-bit computers.

  2. Application Center Resource Kit tools are unsupported