SATbill Satellite Air-time Billing System:
Server & Client Sizing Recommendations

SATbill Versions: Up to and including SATbill 1.16.00 (September 2011). No existing nor 2011-planned SATbill developments would significantly change these recommendations.

4D Versions: v11.9 and v12.3 (see http://www.4d.com/uk/). Server size recommendations for 4D v11 and v12 are the same, as are the client recommendations.

Windows Server:

Operating system: Windows Server 2003 or 2008. SATbill can run on a virtualised server under Windows 2008, as long as the hardware is sufficiently powerful to support multiple server instances.
4D Server (and 4D Client) are 32-bit applications, but using 64-bit server hardware and server operating system (Windows 2003/2008 64-bit editions) will improve SATbills performance.
4D v12.1 onwards offers a specific true 64-bit server option. SATbill has not yet been validated on the 4D v12 Server 64-bit release.
The server chosen for SATbill should not be running any other intensive tasks. For moderate-to-large installations (>100,000 CDRs per month), it is recommended SATbill is located on its own physical or virtual server. The intense use of the system is, of course, during the monthly billing processes. At other times the SATbill server loading is low.
Processor: Minimum four processor (or four core) 2.0+GHz processor(s). SATbill will utilise multiple processors and cores.
Memory: 4GB recommended as it will improve both the overall server performance and SATbills performance. 2GB is the minimum.
Disk space for the core system: The initial system will take between 50MB and 100MB to load (customers, terminals, call plans, air-time agreements etc.). The monthly CDRs & invoices will cause almost all the growth. Allow 120MB for each 100,000 of loaded and invoiced CDRs. For example, an expected volume of 200,000 CDRs per month will require about 3GB of additional disk space per year. CDR volume is, by far, the biggest driver of disk space.
CDRs will be held within SATbill for a minimum of one year. Three years CDR retention is recommended. Hence plan for a maximum system datafile size of at least three times your annual needs. If your stable system size is planned to be >5GB, then it is recommended you use a RAID array which supports striping of the data RAID 5, for example.
Disk space for billing documents: the PDF billing documents are stored on a server location. This location is set in SATbill and does not have to be the same server which is running SATbill. Each PDF invoice document set is typically between 15KB and 200KB, depending on the billing options chosen and the call volumes. Allow 50KB per invoice for sizing purposes, so if you expect a volume of 1,000 invoices per month, you will need about 600MB a year. Normally seven years invoice data will need to be stored.
You will also need space for the Word Invoices (25-30KB per invoice) and Excel Traffic advices (20KB to >1MB per Excel file, depending on call volumes), if you use these options.
Various other files are stored by SATbill onto a server location, including copies of all CDR files loaded to the system. This may use up to a couple of hundred MB per year, much less for small systems.
About 200MB of hard-disk is required for installation of 4D v11 Server.
RAID is valuable for both performance and resilience, and is highly recommended in case of disk failure. RAID 5 for performance is recommended for large SATbill installations (>200,000 CDRs per month).
The SATbill datafiles (.4DD and .4DINDX) and program files (.4DC, .4DA, .Match and .4DINDY total about 40MB) are usually situated within the same server folder. However you may separate the data and program files if you wish. This does not have an impact on performance. The datafiles must have the fastest possible access from/to the server, so always place them on your fastest disk array. The datafile (.4DD) and the data index file (.4DINDX) must reside in the same folder; they cannot be separated.
Back-up: SATbill automatically runs a 4D-based backup at a schedule which you may define. Daily overnight would be the minimum recommended backup frequency. If you wish, you may additionally back-up the system as it is being used during the day, however the on-line performance will be degraded. SATBill also generates a transaction log file, and this too is backed up, thus allowing transaction roll-forward in case of a restore to a previous nights backup.
The backup file size is typically one quarter of the data file size (e.g. 500MB for a 2GB datafile), and it must be located on the SATbill server. It may be then backed up to tape or other permanent networked storage, as you wish. To reduce the volume of the backup, the index file is not backed up; instead it is automatically regenerated whenever 4D Server is started on a restored database. You may also use non-4D back-up tools to take an image of your server. Please ensure that any third-party back-up product you use correctly handles open files.

For reference, our main SATbill development and system test server runs Windows 2003, on a 64-bit four-core Intel Xeon 2.13GHz processor, with 4GB RAM, and 200GB of RAID mirrored storage. We can comfortably run two SATbill test or demonstration systems simultaneously on this server, each with reasonable (2-3GB) data volumes.

The equivalent Windows client minimum specifications are:

Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7.
Minimum 1GB RAM, 2GB highly recommended, especially for Vista and Windows 7.
Minimum screen resolution of 1280x1024 (SATbill will run on an absolute minimum of 1024x768, but higher resolutions give a much better user experience).
2+GHz dual-core processor recommended.
About 200MB of hard-disk for installation of 4D.
Please note: The PC(s) which are used for generating the billing documents MUST be running a 32-bit version of the operating system. PDF production will not work on 64-bit client operating systems. Other non-billing SATbill clients may use 64-bit operating systems.

Network

Minimum 100Mbps network connection.

For the PC(s) which run the monthly billing for large SATbill systems, you will obtain a significant reduction (up to 50%) in the time to complete the billing runs by ensuring these PC(s) have a Gigabit link.

This becomes especially noticeable if you are billing more than 100,000 CDRs per month, and is highly recommended in this case. If you are billing less than 100,000 CDRs per month then a 100Mbps network link will be adequate, depending on your current network utilisation.

For more detailed information about the features and benefits of SATbill, download our PDF Brochure and Overview, or call us today on + 44 (0) 1260 281700, or email satbill@symbiosys-bs.co.uk