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Using the server functionality on a network 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.
Concordance Desktop is optimized to perform at the highest levels; however, it cannot overcome slow Internet connections, slow file servers, or simple overloading. The Concordance Desktop Administration 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.
We recommend giving Concordance Desktop as much memory as possible. Concordance Desktop 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 Desktop allocates a cache that forces too much swapping to disk, indexing will actually run slower.
•Using a disk-caching hard disk controller
•Adding a faster hard disk
•Using a faster computer
•Indexing on a Windows NTFS formatted hard drive
•Indexing individual databases on separate computers
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 computers.
•Adding more cache RAM to your workstation and allocating this RAM to the Indexing cache (up to 2GB maximum per ).
•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.
The Concordance Desktop server does not require a Web server, such as Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) or Apache. Concordance Desktop is a native software application which runs directly on your server. It is optimized specifically for serving Concordance Desktop and viewer data. It does not serve any other kind of data. Remote users connect directly to the server from a Concordance Desktop installation.
The Concordance Desktop 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. However, we strongly recommend, for highest performance, that the server/computer that you plan to register as a Concordance Desktop server be installed by itself on a dedicated server/computer.
All processing for Concordance Desktop shortcut (.fyi) files occurs on the Concordance Desktop server. Concordance Desktop allows you to allocate a specific amount of RAM for indexing databases.
Concordance Desktop 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 Desktop. 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.
As administrators, how you monitor and manage SSL 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.
All information from the Concordance Desktop Admin Console is stored in the FYI.db file, which can be found in the same directory as the Concordance Desktop Program Data folder (ProgramData\CloudNine\Concordance Desktop). This file includes information that is tracked for registered databases, users, licenses, settings, etc. The backup of this file is critically important to ensure the security of the information that is being stored.