Panorama NovaView Products and 64-bit platforms
Panorama NovaView 5.x and 6.X platform is a 32-bit software product implemented using several software technologies and programming languages as C/C++, VB, Java, .NET, ASP and JavaScript.
There is no 64-bit version available for the current 5.x and 6.X generation and Panorama does not plan on creating one for the current generation.
Even though Panorama is a 32-bit application, it is possible to install and run Panorama NovaView 6.x server on a 64-bit platform.
Installation of Panorama 6.X will automatically configure IIS to run in 32bit emulated mode during the installation process. In this case, Panorama will run as a 32-bit code on 64-bit platform in emulated environment.
In case you install Panorama 5.x some extra configuration required. For more details please see the Installation on 64-bit server article.
There are two main consequences should be taken in consideration:
- There is no real performance gain in running 32-bit Panorama on 64-bit platform.
2. Panorama is very strongly integrated with MS IIS web server. Once running Panorama on 64-bit platform, IIS also has to run in 32-bit emulated mode, which means, other applications, real 64-bit ones which are dependent on IIS will not run on the same machine. The most obvious example is MS SQL Server 64 bit which is using IIS for its RS and for some other modules. MS SQL will have to reside on a different server in this case. This note relevant to Windows 2003 server only.
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The overall conclusion is to keep Panorama product on a 32-bit platform. Panorama NovaView server can use unlimited CPU and memory power, so 32-bit hardware can be upgraded to improve performance.
2. MS SQL 64-bit is known to perform better than its 32-bit version, therefore Panorama NovaView on 32-bit server with MS SQL on another 64-bit server is probably the most powerful combination.
Panorama is fully compatible with MS SQL 64-bit server and can also work with mixed versions of MS SQL at the same time (one Panorama server against SQL 2005 or 2008, 32 or 64 bit at the same time).
In general, it is better to scale out (meaning to spread the load across several servers) rather than scale up (meaning having the same load on a single stronger machine). In other words 2-3 32-bit machines are better from the performance (and maybe still from the cost) perspective for an organization than one 64-bit machine.
