MultiSite installation

MultiSite is installed as an optional product component during the HCL VersionVaultHCL Compass installation.

You must install MultiSite on all VOB server hosts where replicated VOBs will reside; replica creation must occur on the host where the replica resides. You do not need to install MultiSite on your computer to manage mastership, because the MultiSite object mastership commands are available in cleartool. However, you may want to install MultiSite on your computer so you have convenient access to other MultiSite commands. You do not need to install MultiSite on HCL VersionVault client hosts or on server hosts that will not host replicated VOBs.

Each site needs a synchronization server to handle packet transport. This host must have the HCL Shipping Server installed on it. Each site also needs a MultiSite administrative host, which must have the HCL Compass MultiSite Administration Tools (multiutil) installed on it. On this host, you run multiutil commands to synchronize and manage replicas.

Each host where replicas will reside or where the shipping server will be used must have enough disk space for the MultiSite storage bay directories. The storage bays hold MultiSite packets, along with their corresponding shipping order files. Disk space needed for storage bay describes the amount of available disk space needed on the disk partition where the storage bay is located.

Table 1. Disk space needed for storage bay
Type of packet Disk space needed
Replica-creation Size of VOB database and VOB source pools.At least twice the size of database and schema repository. Packets can be four times as large as the databases from which they were exported.
Update On Microsoft™ Windows™, twice the size of the largest packet to be stored in the bay. The reason is that there may be two instances of the same packet in the bay at one time: one on its way to another destination, and another waiting to be applied to the replica on the current host.
On the Linux™ and the UNIX™ system, size of largest packet to be stored in the bay.

There is no formula for determining how large your update packets will be. The general rule is that synchronizing more frequently usually results in smaller packets. Yet even if you synchronize every hour, a large amount of development activity or release activity can occur in an hour and a large packet will be generated. If you are not sure that the available disk space can accommodate an unexpectedly large packet, you can configure MultiSite to limit the size of an update packet. For more information, see the shipping.conf (Linux and the UNIX system), MultiSite Control Panel (Windows), syncreplica and sync_export_list reference pages.

For more information about specifying storage bays, see the shipping.conf (Linux and the UNIX system) and MultiSite Control Panel (Windows) reference pages.