Scaling GEOVIA InSite for Small, Medium & Large Operations

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GEOVIA InSite for Production Management is designed so that it can support small, medium, and large mine and plant operations, as well as mine and plant operations that may aggregate up into technology infrastructures as follows:

  • Multi-site
  • Data center
  • Single-instance
  • Centers of Excellence

When planning an InSite deployment, you must consider your planned usage scenario: understanding which InSite components will be used most heavily, and then derive an appropriate configuration to meet those demands.

InSite consists of five basic components:

  • Client applications (Data Management, Data Entry)
  • InSite Application Server (IIS)
  • InSite Data Capture Service (IIS)
  • Database server (SQL Server)
  • Reporting services (SQL Server, SSRS/PBIRS, SSAS, SSIS)

Aside from the client applications, the other four services are hosted on servers, typically on several dedicated servers (virtual or physical). This provides a scalable, robust, and flexible way to scale InSite to support small and large installations, as well as Single-Instance/COE installations.

Client Specification

The recommended and minimum specifications for installing InSite are as follows:

Server Specification

The recommended server installation is for a large mine or Single-Instance/COE implementation. You install the server on four separate machines: a reporting and analysis server, a database server, an application server, and a data capture server. While it is possible to install InSite on only one server, the following configuration is the recommendation because all components perform well under typical usage scenarios.

An example of a typical large mine usage scenario is:

  • 20 concurrent InSite web users
  • 10 users of manual data entry
  • Several users simultaneously executing ad-hoc reporting
  • Integration load of up to 10000 records per day

Minimum system requirements:

Recommended system requirements:

Other Key Considerations

The minimum and recommended system requirements have been developed in collaboration between GEOVIA R&D product specialists and GEOVIA Services implementation consultants based on years of experience around the world, where InSite has been implemented in many different technology contexts.

Here are some of the considerations that went into these specifications that may be helpful when considering your InSite implementation architecture, whether you are implementing InSite for the first time or reviewing  existing architecture for opportunities for improvement:

  • For Optimizing In-Browser User Experience, consider the the ‘Client – Recommended system requirements’ as well as the dedicated InSite Data Capture server under ‘Server – Recommended system requirements’. Both of these elements can directly impact the InSite In-Browser User Experience and are often disregarded because of the very subjective nature of describing a User Experience. A positive user experience is critical in promoting change and adoption of your InSite Production Management solution and should be given key consideration in your implementation strategy.
  • When implementing your dedicated InSite Data Capture server under ‘Server – Recommended system requirements’, consider any external systems that may be requesting/posting information to/from InSite. All ‘web’ traffic to/from InSite should be referencing the InSite Application server, not the InSite Data Capture server. This allows the InSite Application server to focus solely on information requests/posts (optimized for this), and the InSite Data Capture server to focus soley on processing the InSite Data Queue, validating, calculating, and converting your ‘raw data’ in to real ‘business information’ (optimized for this).
  • When implementing your InSite BI Solution, it will be tempting to deploy your InSite Database, InSite Configuration Database, and InSite Data Warehouse, and InSite ETLs all on the InSite Database server, but it is highly recommended to host only the InSite Database on your InSite Database server and host the InSite Configuration Database, InSite Data Warehouse, and InSite ETLs on the InSite Report and Analysis server. This is a proven approach across many BI technology solutions and industries, and will offer a better workload balance for your InSite BI Solution.
  • When deciding between Minimum – SQL Server Report Server (SSRS) and Recommended – Power BI Report Server (PBIRS) for your reporting needs, it is important to recognize that PBIRS is a superset of SSRS and will provide everything that SSRS does, however will also enable some of the great capabilities of on-premise Microsoft Power BI. If you have access to SQL Server Enterprise Edition or a Microsoft Power BI Premium subscription, you already have access to PBIRS and it is highly recommended to take advantage of the additional reporting features that it offers.

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Shaun Macrae

Shaun Macrae

Senior Business Analyst/Project Manager, GEOVIA at Dassault Systèmes
Shaun MacRae delivers Enterprise Mine Production Management solutions to the mining industry in North America. He has been working in the mining systems consulting space for the past 10 years, deploying Enterprise Mining solutions in Canada, Mexico, Bulgaria, Australia, South Africa, and the United States. Shaun is currently based in Alberta, Canada and specializes in GEOVIA InSite, Enterprise Architecture, and Project Management for highly scalable Mining Software deployments.