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Concordance’s system requirements for hardware and software are minimal and network setup is flexible. The primary focus in ensuring that Concordance runs properly for you and your organization is all about processing speed = RAM on your network and individual workstations.

Please review the current system requirements for setup and suggested processor and RAM. Keep informed of Concordance release updates and how they impact your system by checking our Concordance Release Notes.

The minimum system requirements for Concordance are:

In addition to the above, the following specifications are required:

•Appropriate language packs installed

•Computer should also meet the suggested requirements for the operating system being used

•Users must have full network permissions to write to database directory folders/files

•All features under .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0 or above should be installed prior to installing Concordance

 

Network Setup

Concordance offers you administrative flexibility when installing the application, database, and imagebase files. You have the option to place each on different servers, and even different site locations. Concordance is still able to locate the files it needs to operate and access database files.

A typical network installation includes:

•Installing multi-seat licensing on LAN

•Installing Concordance on applications and network servers

•Installing the Workstation .exe on all workstations

•Storing database files anywhere on LAN

•Storing databases and images anywhere on LAN

•Providing all users with full permission to database directory

•Allowing all users the ability to create/edit/delete, like Microsoft Word

Databases should be stored on a good network configuration with ample memory and processing capabilities that allows write capacity. Images should be stored on a good network configuration, but are large files that only need read access; don’t clog your best server with image files unless they need to be linked. Ten to 100 MBPS may not be enough for clients with large datasets.

The network version of Concordance must be installed on a network server drive. The program will allow multiple users to concurrently access a database. The query sessions are maintained in separate, temporary files, located in the user’s default directory or in the directory identified by the TEMP environment variable. Each session is private and will not affect any of the others.

User Configuration Settings

Network user configuration information is stored in two places. Specific user preferences, such as highlighting color and the default search operator, are saved in the workstation’s system registry. For information on the registry key locations, see Concordance Registry Keys.  Specific database settings are stored in the database.ini file. Shared table layouts are stored in the database’s home directory.

Network printing is handled by Microsoft Windows. Concordance will print to any printer you have defined through Windows.

Concordance has menu-option and database security that can be enabled by your Concordance Administrator.

Cache Preferences

The system requirements for Concordance are minimal and you can reference a current version listing in the Help system.

All processing occurs on the individual workstation. The processor and local RAM installed have the greatest impact on searching, sorting, and indexing speeds. Your network, internet connection speeds, and hard disk space will have some impact on the speed as well.

The cache preferences settings allow you to designate a specific amount of local RAM to indexing and searching. These settings are stored in Window’s registry settings.

We recommend modifying this number as it greatly improves your indexing speed. The more RAM you have installed, the more you can designate to this indexing cache so Concordance can process and perform indexing/reindexing faster. You will want to adjust this preference setting on all indexing workstations.  

Total RAM – Operating System RAM – Dictionary Cache = Indexing Cache

Adjust your cache settings when you are installing Concordance on each individual workstation that is used for indexing and reindexing. Make these changes before creating your databases or importing your load files.

Indexing Speed Recommendations

We recommend giving Concordance as much memory as possible. Concordance allocates memory to internal disk buffering during indexing. Any program that decreases the amount of available memory, or performs background processing, could severely impact indexing performance. The larger the database: the greater the impact.

You can control the amount of cache, but be careful when allocating memory to the cache. Windows has virtual memory that is stored on the hard drive when it is not being used. If Concordance allocates a cache that forces too much swapping to disk, indexing will actually run slower.

Indexing speed can be greatly improved by the following:

•Using a disk-caching hard disk controller

•Adding a faster hard disk

•Using a faster computer

•Indexing on a Windows NTFS formatted hard drive.

The highest performance is obtained by combining some or all of these options. There are many recommendations on this subject. All but one has the effect of lowering the workstation’s disk activity. We also recommend indexing individual databases on separate machines.

Lower workstation disk activity by:

•Adding more cache RAM to your workstation and allocating this RAM to the Indexing cache.

•You should leave 128MB unallocated and available for the Microsoft Windows operating system.

•Get a faster processor for the workstation

•Get a caching disk controller on the workstation

•Use a level 1+0 RAID array with your disk caching controller

Implementing these suggestions will result in a significant boost in indexing performance. Index cache and processor speed have the greatest impact.