All actions undertaken by the iNSight application are processed by the backend servers. Backend servers can be used for processing multiple combined modules, such as Report, Transaction Switch, Job, File, Revenue Assurance, etc, or individual processes.
These are not physical servers requiring hardware elements such as disk space, CPUs, memory, etc. Instead, they are virtual servers which are software specified physical resources. Note that these are not the same as Virtual Machines (VMs). Let’s use an example to illustrate the difference between physical servers, VMs and virtual servers.
Let’s say a physical server is an IBM Blade Server with 64 CPU cores, 1TB RAM and 5TB disk space. You could take the physical resources and sub-divide them into various VMs. So the physical server could potentially have five VMs running on it, each with 6 CPU cores, 128GB RAM and 750GB disk space. Each of these VMs can act as a separate system and can have different software installed on it.
In contrast, a virtual server is created by the software running on the VM. In the example above, you would be able to further divide the resources allocated to a VM into virtual servers. This is extremely important since it allows the software, in this case iNSight, to allocate certain processes to run on specific servers.
The Backend Servers can be in a number of different states during their life cycle. The Server Life Cycle includes various statuses including Running, Errored, Restart, Start, Stop and Stopped. Servers should be in a Running state. If they are not running or hung, it means that the module enabled on the server is not running. Whenever the logs of a server are not updating, or when the specific backend server is in a Stopped state, an investigation is required and the issue should be regarded as a high priority.
The Backend Server Screen allows you to access the server logs from the frontend, without needing access to the backend. You can view all the available servers and their logs, which provides a snapshot view of how the system is running. This plays a vital role in monitoring and troubleshooting issues on the iNSight system.
To learn more, see the Backend Servers Elective.