In this Article

Overview

There are several factors to consider when deploying a self-managed Snaplex (Groundplex). Most of these considerations are because of IT requirements in your computing environment, but some also depend on Pipeline production and the types of Pipelines you plan to run in production.

Computing Requirements

The Groundplex must conform to the following minimum specifications:

Supported Operating Systems

Groundplexes support the following operating systems:

• CentOS (or Red Hat) Linux 6.3 or newer.

• Debian and Ubuntu Linux.

• Windows Server 2016/2019/2022 with a minimum of 8 GB RAM.

You can also deploy a Groundplex:

• On a Docker container

• In a Kubernetes Environment

CPU Architecture

We support x86 architecture and do not support ARM.

Network Guidelines and Requirements

The following network guidelines and requirements apply to Groundplex deployments:

• Network throughput

• Network firewall

Network Throughput Guidelines

Groundplexes require connectivity to the SnapLogic Integration Cloud, and also connectivity to the cloud applications which may be used in your Tasks and Pipelines.

To optimize performance, we recommend the following network throughput guidelines:

Network Firewall Requirements

To communicate with the SnapLogic Control Plane, Groundplexes use a combination of HTTP/HTTPS requests and WebSockets communication over the TLS (SSL) tunnel. For this combination to operate effectively, you must configure the firewall to allow the following network communication requirements:

• The nodes of a Snaplex need to communicate among themselves, so it is important that each node can resolve each other's host names. This requirement is crucial when you are making local calls into the Snaplex nodes for the execution of Pipelines instead of initiating it through the SnapLogic Platform. The Pipelines are load-balanced by SnapLogic with Tasks passed to the target node.

• Communication between the customer-managed Groundplex and the SnapLogic-managed S3 bucket is over HTTPS with TLS enforced by default. The AWS-provided S3 URL also uses an HTTPS connection, with TLS enforced by default. If direct access from the Groundplex to the SnapLogic AWS S3 bucket is blocked, then the connection to the AWS S3 bucket communication falls back to a connection through the SnapLogic Control Plane that still uses TLS 1.2.

• To successfully implement the Zero Trust policy on the Kubernetes environment, use the following S3 URLs.

  • snaplogic.com

  • snaplogic-prod-sldb.s3.amazonaws.com

  • s3.amazonaws.com

Learn more about Snaplex network set up.

Network Guidelines for Snap Usage

In the SnapLogic Platform, the Snaps actually communicate to and from the application endpoints. The protocols and ports required for this communication are mostly determined by the endpoints themselves and not by SnapLogic. Cloud and SaaS applications commonly communicate using HTTPS, although older applications and non-cloud or SaaS applications might have their own requirements. 

For example, the following table shows some of these requirements:

Each of these application connections might allow the use of a proxy for the network connection, but it is a configuration option of the application’s connection—not one applied by SnapLogic.

FeedMaster Node Ports

For Ultra Pipelines, the FeedMaster node listens on the following two ports:

• 8084—The FeedMaster's HTTPS port. Requests for the Pipelines are sent here in addition to some internal requests from the other Groundplex nodes.

• 8089—The FeedMaster's embedded ActiveMQ broker SSL port. The other Groundplex nodes connect to this port to send and receive messages.

The machine hosting the FeedMaster nodes needs to have those ports open on the local firewall, and the other Groundplex nodes need to allow outbound requests to the FeedMaster nodes on those ports.

Groundplex Name and Associated Nodes

Every Snaplex requires a name, for example, ground-dev or ground-prod. In the SnapLogic Designer, you can choose the Snaplex where Pipelines are executed.

Your nodes are associated with a Grounplex through the Environment variable: for example, dev or prod. When you configure the nodes for your Groundplex, you must set the jcc.environment to the Environment value that you provided in the Create Snaplex dialog. You can change this variable in the Update Snaplex dialog.

After the Snaplex service is started on a node, the service connects to the SnapLogic Cloud service. Runtime logs from the Snaplex are written to the following folder: 

• Linux: /opt/snaplogic/run/log 

• Windows: c:\opt\snaplogic\run\log

The Dashboard shows the currently connected nodes for each Snaplex.

Understanding the Distribution of Data Processing across Snaplex Nodes

When a Pipeline or Task is executed, the work is assigned to one of the JCC nodes in the Snaplex. The scheduling of pipelines across nodes in a Snaplex is based on an algorithm that is least-loaded, with priority on memory usage. If there are similarly loaded nodes, the algorithm randomizes the pipeline execution across them.

Node Cluster

Starting multiple nodes with the JCC service pointing to the same Snaplex configuration automatically forms a cluster of nodes if you follow these requirements for nodes in a Snaplex:

• The nodes need to communicate with each other on the following ports: 8081, 8084, and 8090.

• The nodes should have a reliable, low-latency network connection between them.

• The nodes should be homogeneous in that they should have the same CPU and memory configurations, as well as access to the same network endpoints.

• All JCC nodes should be the same size. All FeedMaster nodes should be the same size for load balancing. Worker and FeedMaster nodes can be of different sizes.

JCC Node Communication Requirements

Each JCC node publishes its IP addresses to the control plane. DNS is not required for communication between nodes. We recommend setting up all the nodes inside a Snaplex in the same network and data center. Communication between JCC nodes in the same Snaplex is required for the following reasons:

• The Pipeline Execute Snap communicates directly with neighboring JCC nodes in a Snaplex to start child Pipeline executions and send documents between parent and child Pipelines.

• The data displayed in Data Preview is written to and read from neighboring JCC nodes in the Snaplex.

• The requests and responses made in Ultra Pipelines are exchanged between a FeedMaster node and all JCC nodes in a Snaplex.

• A Ground Triggered Task (invoked from a Groundplex) can be executed on a neighboring JCC node because of load-balancing, in which case, the Pipeline prepare request, and the bodies of the request and response, are transferred between nodes.

Any extra latency or network hops between neighboring JCC nodes can introduce performance and reliability problems.