System Recommendations

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System Recommendations

FYI Server is native software application which runs directly on your server. It does not require a Web server, such as Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) or Apache®. However, FYI Reviewer is accessed through a Web browser and requires users to have Internet access and Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, or Google Chrome.  When using Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome, something like "IE Tab" or a similar browser extension must be downloaded and installed so that the browser can emulate Internet Explorer.

Installing and using the FYI Server requires proficiency with Internet addressing, ports, firewalls, and potentially with local area network (LAN) topologies and security settings. These issues can be complex even for experts. Your IT staff or Internet service providers are best suited to assist you with the security and network settings specific to your company.

FYI Server software is optimized to perform at the highest levels; however, it cannot overcome slow Internet connections, slow file servers, or simple overloading. The FYI Server Admin Console can monitor server performance to help identify bottlenecks and server saturation. Interpreting the information and correcting certain issues may require the assistance of an IT professional.

Network connection speed, network traffic, database and imagebase size, and other items may be a factor when evaluating performance. Please review the following recommendations for enhancing performance.

 

Additional Recommendations

For best performance follow the recommendations outlined in our System Requirements.

Network connection speed, network traffic, database and imagebase size, and other items may be a factor when evaluating performance. To maximize performance, the user capacity of the FYI Server is metered by the hardware. A Xeon or Pentium Hyper Threaded (HT) CPU will support 50 users. Multiply CPU capacity for dual and quad CPU servers. Server capacity is also limited by bandwidth on your LAN and your Internet connection, and by file server speed.

The FYI Server requires a minimum of 100 MB of available hard disk space for installation of software, generated logs and temporary files, plus additional space for databases as required.

We recommend storing databases directly on FYI Server for highest performance and system reliability. Indexing, reindexing, and packing may require extra disk space.

Performance may be affected by indexing, overloading of available Internet or LAN bandwidth, or in situations where databases are not stored directly on the FYI Server. Add processors or bandwidth if performance is an issue.

 

Client Software

Concordance version 10.x or later or FYI Reviewer version 4.x or later, is required to access databases from FYI Server version 4.x or later. Concordance Image version 5.x or later is required to access images. Concordance, Concordance Image, and FYI Reviewer are licensed separately and are not included with FYI Server. FYI Reviewer is an ActiveX control designed for Microsoft Internet Explorer.

FYI Reviewer can run on any modern workstation or laptop that runs the latest version of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer version 6.x or later, Microsoft Edge, or Google Chrome.

 

Compatability

FYI Server 4.x is compatible with:

Concordance version 10.x or later, both mobile and network versions

Concordance Image version 5.x or later, both mobile and network versions

FYI Reviewer version 4.x or later

Concordance and Concordance Image single-user versions and Passport are not FYI-enabled and, therefore, are not compatible with FYI Server.

 

Web Servers

The FYI Server does not require a Web server, such as Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) or Apache. FYI Server is a native software application which runs directly on your server. It is optimized specifically for serving Concordance, Concordance Native Viewer and Concordance Image (Opticon) data. It does not serve any other kind of data. Remote users connect directly to FYI Server from Concordance using a .fyi database file, or through FYI Reviewer via the Internet.

The FYI Server is compatible with Web servers for data hosting, and will run on a computer that is also running Web, FTP, mail, and other Internet servers. We strongly recommend for highest performance that the FYI Server should be installed by itself on a dedicated server.

 

Memory and RAM

All processing for Concordance .FYI and FYI Reviewer occurs on the FYI Server. FYI Server allows you to allocate a specific amount of RAM for indexing databases. Although you can index databases on FYI Server, we recommend that you index all databases locally on dedicated admin machines so that processing can be reserved for reviewers.

Concordance allows you to allocate a specific amount of memory for the purpose of indexing databases. You can allocate up to 2GB per process in the Indexing cache field on the Indexing tab in the Preferences (Tools > Preferences) dialog box in Concordance. To determine the minimum amount of RAM you can allocate for indexing take (Total RAM) – (O/S RAM).

For more information about calculating the indexing and dictionary cache, see Adjusting indexing settings and Adjusting dictionary cache settings.

 

Latency and Bandwidth

As administrators, how you monitor and manage TLS 1.2 packets and set up your firewalls affects reviewer bandwidth for sending and receiving information from your in-house network to remote users. If users are experiencing latency issues, you will need to run a trace route for any dropped packets and check your firewalls to see if there’s any delay in sending and receiving information, and then fix any issues within your network.

For more information about firewalls, see About setting up and managing firewalls.

 

The FYI.db File

All information from the FYI Admin Console is stored in the FYI.db file, which can be found in the same directory as the FYI Server install. This file includes information that is tracked for registered databases, users, network mapping, FYI Reviewer licenses, firewalls, etc. The backup of this file is critically important to ensure the security of the information that is being stored.