Different ways to deploy Bitrix products

Hello, hello! What's been up, how's it going?! Hope you are all doing just fine!

I've been talking to one of our Intranet Portal clients recently, - they purchased Bitrix Intranet Portal with unlimited user license because there is around 5K employees in their company. Now that the employees are ready to be linked together into a corporate network and start collaborating in an Enterprise2.0 style ))) they've chosen us to be an ECM solution provider for their business. It does flatter us to have such a big enterprise deciding to use our products and services.

Well I'd better cut down this introductory bullshoots and get down to business. The thing is that the IT specialists working for this company have been thinking over the idea to use Bitrix Virtual Appliance (BVA) as an environment for their Intranet Portal project...

When I learned that from them, I spoke to our IT guys who said it might not be quite a good idea to use a BVA for such great loads that could happen when a large number of users get their accounts activated and start interacting online simultaneously. However, there are some other ways to deploy Bitrix Intranet Portal. Let me share with you more information on the most commonly used ways to deploy Bitrix products... UPD: 05FEB2010

Deployment options

For both testing purposes and common use we offer several options that you may choose when developing and running web projects on Bitrix platforms:

• Virtual Appliances (several editions)
• Bitrix Environment for Windows servers
• RPM Environment for UNIX servers

Bitrix Virtual Appliance

The fastest and most convenient way to utilize Bitrix products is, of course, deploying them in any of existing editions of Bitrix Virtual Appliance (BVAs) that can be hosted both locally and on a remote server. However, BVAs have a number of inherent functional and technological limitations, for example, low scalability of web projects. We do not recommend using a BVA for commercial purposes especially when high loads are involved (intensive traffic, large number of active visitors).

Bitrix Environment

The Bitrix Web Environment package is extremely useful for testing the trial versions of Bitrix Site Manager and Bitrix Intranet Portal. The Bitrix Web Environment installation wizard deploys the following applications required by the system: MySQL 5.0.51, Apache 2.2, PHP 5.2, ZendOptimizer 3.3, eAccselerator 0.9. It creates a good web environment that is suitable and required by Bitrix products. Still, it might lack flexibility when new hardware added or modified (e.g. when upgrading web server facilities or extending HDD capacity). The Bitrix Web Environment is used for MS Windows platform only.

RPM package

There is also a special RPM package that has been created by Bitrix IT-department. It can be installed and deployed on any server that uses UNIX environment. Just like any edition of BVA, the RPM package has been designed to make the Bitrix products' operability more efficient, plus it helps avoid limitations in project scalability that are common to virtual appliances. In that case, using more advanced hardware infrastructure (e.g. multi processor systems) will allow users scale and control equipment and, depending on traffic and actual loads, adjust it for better performance. That means that you will be able to solve project scalability problems flexibly by adding or disabling processor capacity, increasing or limiting hard disk drive space, etc.

Bitrix RPM is being optimized for the US and European markets and not yet available on our official website. However, if you are interested in deploying you Bitrix projects using an RPM package, I shall send you a link where you can download RPM package. Just write me your email address in the comments to this post, or contact me via email: consult-at-bitrixsoft.com

What is the user limit for Bitrix Intranet Portal that can bring down the system?

Well, you cannot say for sure what should be the exact quantity of users simultaneously working on the Bitrix Intranet Portal so that the system won't show any signs of overload and remains 100% stable. There are a lot of different factors that are to be considered. Let me give you an example why it cannot be estimated as precise as one would want it to do. There is a big different between:

• 500 users simultaneously browsing through the portal pages and sections;
• 500 users simultaneously working with the portal documents (uploading, modifying, tagging, etc.);
• 500 users simultaneously uploading, downloading or watching videos, playing audio files, etc.

As you can see, the number of online users is the same, but the different actions they perform on the intranet portal create different levels of system loading.

One of my colleagues from the IT department told me that ...being under high loads of data traffic, the best performance of Bitrix Intranet Portal can be achieved using either a (a) more advanced instance that can be rented at Amazon EC2, or (b) by deploying a web project using a really good set of hardware equipment at your own premises combined with the advantages of RPM package... So, what are they actually?

(a) Rented Amazon EC2 instances

The main advantage of using an Amazon EC2 instance (large instance is recommended - see the table, below) is that it allows you both to use advanced (virtual / rented) hardware equipment and ready-to-deploy BVA Amazon EC2 Edition . Plus you can also use BVA Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Storage) as the core element of your data backup strategy. You won't have to buy any of expensive hardware equipment to set it on your company's premises or spend money on its maintenance; neither will you have to spend extra money on a numerous IT staff. It can be done at Amazon EC2 online. You just rent it.

The small instance type is the original Amazon EC2 instance type available since the launch of Amazon EC2. It is the default instance type for all customers. To use other instance types, you must specify them through the RunInstances operation. More information on Amazon Instance sizes you can find here. More informatio on Amazon Instance prices can be found here.

However, there are some disadvantages. For example, once you choose the instance, it will be pain in the neck to change it to a bigger/smaller one or relocate the project to some other services.

(b) Advanced hardware equipment and RPM

The greatest thing about using your own equipment and RPM package is that you can fine tune the system very easily, and it belongs to you. The more users you have on the portal, the more upgrades you may choose to make to the hardware you use (change CPU processor, add RAM, increase HDD capacity, etc.); it offers you incredible flexibility. To understand whether it is a good solution for your company to use RPM package, think on the following questions:

• Do you have proper/advanced hardware equipment to run the system locally?
• Are you ready to invest in good hardware equipment for your company?
• Can your IT professionals take care of both hardware equipment and RPM package?
• Are they qualified to render appropriate maintenance? Are they UNIX-literate?

Summary

Hope this information was useful.
I wish you all the best! See you later!