The hardware required is dependent upon the expected load your specific instance will be expected to handle. SCS can run inside a virtual machine hosted on a laptop, but the fewer resources you provide the poorer the performance will be. If you only have a minimal number of sensors and very few clients then you can attempt to use a low-end setup. The more sensors you add, the rate at which they output their data, the number of client computers you will be servicing and/or the amount of calculated feeds or number of QA/QC checks all will dictate the amount of resources required your server. It is generally recommended to have substantially more than you will need as hardware is [relatively] cheap and performance issues can lead to timestamp errors, etc since Windows is not a RTOS.
For general reference NOAA ships base hardware and setup (as of FY20) are noted below:
| Platform | (2x) Dell PowerEdge R440 Server |
| Processor | (2x) Intel® Xeon® Gold 5218 2.3G, 16C/32T, 10.4GT/s, 22M Cache, Turbo, HT (125W) DDR4-2666 |
| Memory | (2x) 32GB RDIMM, 2666MT/s, Dual Rank |
| Disk | PERC H730P RAID Controller (4x) 2TB 7.2K RPM NLSAS 12Gbps 512n 3.5in Hot-Plug Hard Drive |
If getting a 1U server (such as the R440) be sure to have enough PCI slots to accommodate a serial port adapter card if applicable. The spec above includes a 2x16 LP PCI Riser.
While both servers have the full SCS suite installed in normal operation the two servers are assigned different roles. One server is setup as the primary Web/Application server which runs the website and majority of SCS services (data acquisition, event logging, etc). The other server is setup as the primary database server and is essentially dedicated to that job (majority of RAM is assigned to the database).
As mentioned, the full suite is installed on both servers though they are tailored to their specific role. This is because in the event of a hardware failure either server can assume "full" SCS capabilities (eg the web server also has the database and the database server has the web so either can provide SCS CoOp if the other server goes down). However, while SCS can continue to function in the event one of the servers goes down, performance will be degraded until it is restored. Please contact the SEG team immediately if you experience a hardware failure while underway and need assistance getting fully operational again. SOPs and helper scripts have been written to switch the role of any given server to "single" mode should it's partner fail.
Currently, Windows remains the required underlying host OS. SCS can be installed on:
All above operating systems should have all updates and service packs applied to bring them up to the latest version prior to installation of SCS.
Minimum version: 4.8
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