Server-to-Server Connections

This is one of the network requirements for a successful STEP setup. The full list is defined in the Network Requirements topic here.

All connectivity between servers within each environment must be direct connections. This can be achieved either through dedicated NICs or through point-to-point switches without the interference from any additional hardware and/or software.

The introduction of load balancing or firewall hardware and/or software known to cause the following issues due to limitations and malfunctions in the introduced hardware and/or software:

degradation of performance
server instability
environment instability

Servers must have permanent IP addresses assigned, either by manually configuring network settings on the servers, or by dedicating a specific IP address for each server on the DHCP server. Server IP addresses must not change while the application is in operation. This is particularly important for systems with multiple application and/or database servers.

All application servers in a STEP application cluster must be located on the same network segment / VLAN, so a firewall may never be located between application servers.

It is not uncommon that application and database are placed on different networks, and thus separated by a firewall. This is accepted by Stibo System as long as the network latency requirements mentioned below are still met.

Network Bandwidth Requirement

Minimum requirement is 1 Gbit dedicated network between all servers, except to file servers. For enterprise systems with a heavy workload profile, a 10 Gbit dedicated network is recommended.

Important: Using the STEP In-Memory component requires a 10 Gbit network between application servers and database server.

Network Latency Requirements

The requirements for network latency between application servers in a STEP application cluster and between application server(s) and database server(s) are:

Maximum 0.2 ms with a 64 bytes packet size
Maximum 0.4 ms with a 8K packet size
Maximum 1.-0 ms with a 32K packet size

For more information, see the Network Latency Measurements and Tools section of the Infrastructure Checks topic here.

Server-to-Server Network Requirements

The following table summarizes the inter-server communication requirements:

Source	Target	Protocol	Port	Comment
Application Server	Application Server	Cache coherency	5636	Used for internal STEP application clustering cache. Only relevant when having more than one application server.
Application Server	Application Server	In-Memory	5999	STEP In-Memory data communication / exchange. Only relevant when there is more than one application server and using STEP In-Memory.
Application Server(s)	Database Server	SQL Net	1521	Communication between application and database. 1521 is the default port, so it could be different on any given installation.