Overview
A brief overview of the FineReport cluster architecture is load balancing, state server, file server/node synchronization, and external database. The architecture is clear, but application components in the architecture need selecting and matching according to different scenarios.
This article will introduce how to choose a cluster solution, providing some effective guidance for IT personnel to plan and design cluster solutions.
Cluster Solutions
Cluster Architecture
Environment | Application Architecture | Container | External Database | Load Balancing | Status Server | File Server |
Linux Windows | Servlet | Tomcat WebLogic WebSphere | MySQL SQL Server Oracle DB2 | 1. Software load balancing:
2. Hardware load balancing: F5 | Redis+ (cluster/standalone) | FTP SFTP HDFS S3/OSS/OBS Share external directories:
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You need to notice the following points:
It is not recommended to use Nginx 1.14.1 and its previous versions. It is recommended to use Nginx-1.15.6.
It is not recommended to install and use Nginx on Windows, and it is recommended to install and use Traefik on Windows. For more details, see Introduction to Cluster Solution.
There is an issue of Chinese garbled characters in NFS solution on Windows. It is recommended to use Linux for deployment.
Cluster Configuration Recommendations
Category | Ordinary Solution | High Availability Solution | Introduction |
External database | Standalone database | Primary-Backup mode | Configurations such as max_connections and pool_size in the database can easily affect concurrency limits and can be optimized. |
Load balancing | Nginx (recommended) | Nginx+keepalived | Each Nginx application requires only 1 GB of memory (normally only 15 MB is required for 50,000 concurrent connections), and there are no storage space requirements. |
Status server | Redis standalone | Redis cluster | Each Redis application only requires 4 GB of memory. |
File server | FTP/SFTP | HDFS/NAS/OSS | File servers can easily affect concurrency performance and can be optimized. For example, in FTP, frequently reading and writing templates by multiple nodes can lead to blocking and lagging, which can be resolved through configuration or improved disk performance. |
Node | Concurrency: The number of users who send edit/view requests to the server at the same time. For specific node configurations, refer to the table below. | 1. JVM memory does not exceed 32 GB. 2. It is recommended that the node memory should be at least 1.25 times the JVM memory. | |
The specific configuration of the node is shown in the table below:
Concurrency | Number of Nodes | Node Memory Configuration |
0~100 | 1 | JVM-8G |
100~200 | 1 | JVM-12G |
200~300 | 1 | JVM-16G |
300~400 | 2 | JVM-12G |
400~500 | 2 | JVM-16G |
500~900 | 3 | JVM-16G |
900~1200 | 4 | JVM-32G |
Typical Cluster Structure Recommendations
1. Two-Node Cluster (Entry-Level High Availability)
Environment | Linux | CentOS 7 |
Application Architecture | Servlet | / |
Container | Tomcat | Tomcat 8 |
External Database (Configuration Database) | MySQL (standalone) | MySQL 5 |
Load Balancing | Nginx (standalone) | Nginx-1.15.6 |
Status server | Redis (standalone) | Redis 5/6 |
File Synchronization Method | SFTP | Configuring the SSH service |
2. Three-Node Cluster (Standard High Availability)
Environment | Linux | CentOS 7 |
Application Architecture | Servlet | / |
Container | Tomcat | Tomcat 8 |
External Database (Configuration Database) | Oracle (cluster) | Oracle 11g RAC |
Load Balancing | Nginx (hot standby) | Nginx + Keepalived |
Status Server | Redis (cluster) | Redis 5/6 (three masters and three slaves) |
File Synchronization Method | HDFS | Hadoop 3.0 |
3. Windows Clusters
Environment | Windows | Windows Server 2008 |
Application Architecture | Servlet | / |
Container | WebLogic | WebLogic 12.2.1.3.0 |
External Database (Configuration Database) | SQL Server (Standalone) | SQL Server 2008 |
Load Balancing | Traefik (standalone) | Traefik 2.0 |
Status Server | Redis (standalone) | Redis 5/6 |
File Synchronization Method | FTP | Configuring IIS WEB service |
4. Other Instructions
In addition, it also supports K8S cluster for application orchestration and auto-scaling.
In cloud environments, higher availability is achieved in cluster environments through cloud provider's technologies such as AWS ELB, Alibaba Cloud OSS, and Tencent Cloud Redis.
Note: If you are interested in these two solutions, send an email to international@fanruan.com or click 
at https://www.finereport.com/en/.
Deployment and Operation
The process is shown below:
Requesting Resources
Each component needs to request resources.
For a standard high-availability cluster, each component needs to be deployed on separate servers, with physical isolation to prevent interference between components.
Servers:
1. Project servers (two or more)
2. Server where the external database is located
3. Server where the load balancer is located
4. Status server
5. File server
Note: The number and configuration of each server are related to the business. It requires professional performance testing by FineReport, combined with network environment, file read/write efficiency, database concurrency performance and other factors, to determine the concurrency level that can be supported, and thus provide reasonable suggestions.
Firewall: The network among all nodes must be accessible.
Port: refer to Cluster Environment Preparation
Starting Deployment
1. Use cluster environment detection tool to check if the system environment meets the requirements for cluster deployment.
2. Each server needs to install the required components, which can be done using automated deployment tools (only applicable to Linux systems).
3. Run FineReport server and configure all components on the configuration page.
4. In the cluster configuration page, you can configure Redis storage key prefix, and after setting this parameter, it will not conflict with the keys of other servers.
5. Restart the server. If the number of nodes is normal and there are no error messages, it means that the cluster deployment is successful.
Note: After configuration, you can install a system availability monitoring tool. When the cluster is suddenly unavailable, you will receive an immediate notification.
Cluster Usage Recommendations
When modifying templates, try to switch to the remote directory for operation. If it is necessary to manually modify the template file, you need to manually refresh the cache.
