Administration Guide › Scalability Best Practices › Scalability Recommendations › Remote Deployment and Policy Configuration Recommendations › Scalability Use Cases › Large Environments

Large Environments

In this use case, approximately 21,000 Agents are being managed. These agents are spread across three data centers, with each data center containing from 2,000 through 10,000 targets. The data centers are distributed, but have fast links between them. The managed systems are largely virtualized, run various workloads, and are reprovisioned at times.

Recommendations for this environment would be:

• Component Installation

  We strongly recommend running an instance of CA Server Automation in each data center, so that each instance manages up to 10,000 systems.

  Within each data center, we recommend installing the CA Server Automation manager components on a dedicated server. This server must meet the minimum supported specification, but we recommend an increased 8-GB RAM.

  We suggest installing the Database on a separate, dedicated server with 8-GB RAM.

  If a single instance of CA Server Automation is required, we recommend using Manager and Database Servers with quad-core processors with 16-GB RAM.

  To support Remote Deployment and Policy Configuration operations, we recommend installing a Distribution Server in each Data Center and one being installed on the Manager system.

• Initial Deployment

  In this use case, we have one additional distribution server in the datacenter. Apart from that one difference in the setup, all the factors that were highlighted in the previous scenario apply equally to this scenario.

• Service membership

  For ease of maintenance, we suggest splitting the monitored servers into multiple Services, with a maximum of 500 servers per Service.

• Applying Policies

  We suggest limiting the base policy to control settings and ‘base OS’ monitors. Where different images are being used as the basis for virtual machines, a base policy can be created for each OS image. Verify that the SystemEDGE is configured to request this policy on registration.

  For application-specific monitors, create templates that are based on individual monitoring requirements. To avoid index conflicts across templates, we suggest defining ‘index ranges’ up-front for each application. Alternatively, the base policy can be configured to “Automatically Resolve Indexes” under the ‘Control settings’ section.

  Splitting the monitoring requirements into templates allows the templates to be applied to the required systems, independently of each other. You can either manually select systems, or apply templates to a service. We recommend applying templates in batches of 2,000 to 2,500 systems.

  If the base policy is required to be changed, we recommend applying the policy to systems in batches of 2,000 to 2,500 systems.

  Note: When templates are used, each delivery of a template or policy involves merging of all assigned templates with the base policy. The next step is delivering the resultant configuration to the agent. Therefore, where multiple templates are applied to a system, the time for delivery may be slightly increased.

  Important! Contact CA Support if multiple instances of CA Server Automation are deployed and if you want to share the created policies between the different instances. CA Support can assist with the export and import of policies and templates between CA Server Automation instances.