Clarification on FAST ESP Recommended and minimum specifications from the CA Service Desk readme and the FAST installation guide.

Products

• CA IT Asset Manager
• CA Software Asset Manager (CA SAM)
• ASSET PORTFOLIO MGMT- SERVER
• SUPPORT AUTOMATION- SERVER
• CA Service Desk Manager - Unified Self Service
• CA Service Desk Manager
• CA Service Management - Asset Portfolio Management
• CA Service Management - Service Desk Manager

Issue/Introduction

Description:

This document is intended to help to clarify the FAST ESP Hardware requirements.

The CA Service Desk R12 Release notes show the following recommended hardware for the FAST ESP engine:

FAST ESP Hardware Requirements

The following information lists the recommended hardware requirements for the FAST ESP search engine:

Component	Requirement
Server	Dedicated, stand-alone server on which to install the FAST ESP search engine.
RAM	4 GB (Development Computer) 8 GB (Production Computer)
CPU	2 (Development Computer) 4 (Production Computer)
Hard Disk Space	2.5 GB (Development Computer) 2.5 GB, in addition to added disk space for knowledge base (Production Computer)
Hard Disks (Production Computer)	SATA: 7.2K RPM RAID 4 (Small system) SCSI: 10K RPM RAID 5 (Medium system) SCSI: 15K RPM RAID 10 (Large system) Important! For complete FAST ESP prerequisite installation information, such as supported hardware, and configuration procedures, see the FAST ESP Installation Guide, included on the installation media in the following folder: \CA_tps.nt\FastESP\Doc\en-US.

The FAST ESP Installation Guide shows the following minimum requirements for a FAST Installation:

Hardware

This section describes the hardware requirements that you must take into consideration when installing FAST ESP.

Fast recommends the following hardware as a minimum:

Memory: The memory should be 4GB (although FAST will run on machines with less memory).

Swap Space: The swap space should be twice the machine's physical memory.

Disk Storage System: The disk storage system should be able to handle a high number of disk transactions per second.

CPU: A typical machine should have one or two 1 GHz (or faster) CPUs.

There is obviously a big difference between the information in the ServiceDesk readme and the information within the FAST install guide.

Solution:

The Recommended Hardware, or its equivalent, (For example, a Quad core processor as opposed to 4 separate single core processors) should be a starting point for a typical Production implementation of FAST ESP.

Depending on the use of the search engine; the amount of content that will be indexed, the number of users and frequency querying FAST, the recommended hardware may be more, or less, than is actually necessary to have smooth Search performance. For example, the Hard Drive requirements in a production environment will be many times the 2.5 GB listed above and will increase over time, whereas a smaller implementation, with a low search volume, may only need a 2 CPU, or equivalent, system.

The requirements for an individual environment will need to be discussed in detail with an Architect during the initial planning stages to ensure that proper hardware is in place for current and future needs for the entire CA Service Desk implementation including the FAST ESP Search engine.

Environment

Release:
Component: ARGIS