Upgrading from Spotfire 7.0 or earlier – an introduction
The biggest change from Spotfire 7.0 and earlier versions to Spotfire 7.5 and later is that Spotfire Server now handles all external communication and that Spotfire Web Player and Spotfire Automation Services have become a set of scalable back-end services, installed on nodes.
That means that all web client users connect to Spotfire Server instead of a Spotfire Web Player server, and that Spotfire Automation Services connects to Spotfire Server instead of to an Automation Services server.
A Spotfire 7.0 or earlier environment:
A Spotfire 7.5 or later environment:
When upgrading from Spotfire 7.0 or 6.5, this change mostly affects two things: Spotfire Server now handles all user authentication, regardless of which Spotfire client they use, and no load balancing is required in front of any Spotfire Web Player servers.
Upgrading Spotfire Server is done the same way as in previous versions. You install the new Spotfire Server and use the Spotfire Server Upgrade tool to upgrade the database and, if selected, copy certain files from the old installation of Spotfire Server to the new installation directory.
To upgrade to the new Spotfire Web Player and Spotfire Automation Services, you apply your applicable existing configurations, install the services on a node, and deploy any extensions.
It is recommended that you set up a staging environment for testing before upgrading.
Some specific things to take into consideration when upgrading are:
- CPU and memory: Because Spotfire Server performs more work than in previous versions, it consumes more resources, I/O as well as CPU. All non-client computers in your environment (the computers that host Spotfire Server, and the nodes) require at least 16 GB of memory.
- Centralized configuration: All configuration files are now stored in the Spotfire database. This means that a Spotfire Web Player service or Spotfire Automation Services configuration can be centrally applied to all services in your environment. However, this also means that names and content of configuration files have been changed and that old configurations must be copied manually.
- Authentication: In Spotfire 7.0 and 6.5, you configure authentication on the Spotfire Server for Spotfire Analyst users and on the Spotfire Web Player server for Spotfire web client users. In the new environment you set up the authentication for all users on Spotfire Server. This means that the same authentication method is used for Spotfire Analyst users as for Spotfire web client users. Therefore, it is no longer supported to use different authentication methods for Spotfire Analyst users and Spotfire web client users. However, anonymous authentication can be combined with another authentication method on the same Spotfire Server. If a custom authentication method was used, this is configured as an external authentication on Spotfire Server.
- Load Balancing: If your Spotfire 7.0 or 6.5 environment had multiple Spotfire Web Player servers and a load balancer, the load balancer in front of the Web Players is no longer needed. In the new environment, each Web Player service on each node can have multiple instances running. The load balancer in front of the Spotfire Web Players is replaced by the routing capabilities of Spotfire Server. A load balancer can still be used in front of multiple Spotfire Servers.
- Web Links: If you have old web links to analyses, these must be updated. Because all users now connect to Spotfire Server, the DNS entry to the former Web Player server must now point to the Spotfire Server.
- Automation Services: Existing scheduled Spotfire Automation Services jobs, using the Client Job Sender, must be updated because the configurations have changed and the Client Job Sender now connects to Spotfire Server instead of an Automation Services Server.
- Extensions and customizations: API Extensions or customizations, such as custom visualizations or co-branding, must be updated when upgrading to the new environment.
For more information on changes needed, and instructions on how to upgrade your environment, see Upgrading from 7.0 or earlier.