Report server recommendations
- Last UpdatedFeb 10, 2025
- 2 minute read
The Report Server provides the content to operators in the plant, office users, and corporate users. Its source of information is from the Production Database Server. Typically your Production Database Server is on the Plant Production Network while the office users are on the Plant Business Network and it is not uncommon for a firewall to be between them.
Your network administrator needs to provide access to the Report Server for both groups of users. See Network interconnection requirements for more details.
The Report Server is not considered a production server. That is, it can go down without interruptions to production and without losing production data.
Installations that run large reports or do data mining on the MES database should perform these operations on an Archive database and not the actual Production database. This will prevent large queries from using resources that are required for production transactions. For information about the Archive database, see Archive server recommendations.
Included with the MES software is a limited version of BI Gateway to be used as the Report Server. The BI Gateway service extracts data from the MES production database and stores that data in the BI Gateway database. The provided MES reports query the data in the BI Gateway database. For more information, see the MES BI Gateway Reports Guide.
Key parameters
The following table describes the recommended key parameters to use for the Report Server in a medium-size system.
|
Parameter |
Comments |
|---|---|
|
Standard Configuration |
Minimum 16 GB RAM, typical 32 GB RAM 2-TB disk, RAID 10 – For Data 500-GB disk, no RAID – For Backups |
|
Microsoft Components |
SQL Server SQL Server Reporting Services Microsoft .NET Framework IIS |
|
MES Components |
MES BI Gateway Reports Custom Reports |
|
BI Gateway Components |
BI Gateway |
|
Scalability |
Typically only one server is needed. Additional servers are added in a load balance approach with different groups of users linked to different servers. |
|
High Availability/Fault Tolerance |
This server does NOT require High Availability. If the server is completely lost, it can be rebuilt without the loss of production data. |
|
Key Measures |
CPU usage < 30% Memory stable with 1 GB free |
|
Data Requirements |
Moderate-size system C: OS - 120 GB available, RAID 0 D: Data - 2-TB available, RAID 10 E: Backup - 500 GB, no RAID |
|
Other Databases |
The Report Server typically will have the following databases:
|