Frequently Asked Questions

Nuxeo supports and certifies the following hardware and software:

Hardware:

Operating Systems:

RDBMS:

Java Runtime Environment (JRE):

Java EE application servers:

The most used configuration is JBoss AS 4.0.4 GA using JRE 1.5.0_11 on RedHat AS 4.x running on Intel x86 hardware.

Intel-based hardware (bi-Dual Core, Quad Core or bi-Quad Core), 4GB of RAM. The required disk space only depends on the data volume to store (raw requirements to be secure: size of files to manage * 2).

Each release (major and minor) is delivered with an upgrade procedure, new features list, improvements list, fixed bugs list and known bugs/limitations list. Moreover the issue tracker is public (it allows everybody to see the status of the software, known/ongoing bugs and issues, features/improvement roadmap, etc.).

An installation guide is available. Upgrade procedures are delivered along each release.

An administration guide is available and updated with each release.

A User Guide is delivered with each release.

A developer guide is delivered and constantly improved.

The reference manual assembles all the documentation available for users, developers, operation teams, etc.

Nuxeo provides several other documents/resources such as the API (Javadoc), some tutorials, specific Archetypes for Maven 2 (useful to quickly bootstrap new plugins / projects), etc.

The documentation is available in the English language. Translation to French, Spanish, German and Italian are supported/provided by the community (if you require a specific language, you can order it from Nuxeo).

The documentation of included software are either included in the reference documentation if it's useful for common operations, either linked if not. All the documentation of Nuxeo EP and bundled software packages is freely available.

Yearly major release and quarterly minor release. The high-level roadmap is published by Nuxeo and updated frequently. Detailed roadmap is available from the issue tracker (all details are available on each issue such as comments, status, votes, related commit in the SCM, etc.).

See installation procedure. XXX Add link.

The "Administration and Operation Guide" describes available monitoring points. In short, Nuxeo EP offers a set of JMX services to monitor all critical points of the application (standard Java EE applications monitoring system). Moreover, logs can be broadcasted using log4j capabilities (SNMP, email, etc.). Both should be usable by all major monitoring software.

Nuxeo EP is fully based on Java EE 5 and supports related clustering and HA features. JBoss Clustering is the recommended clustering and HA solution for Nuxeo EP's services. Nuxeo EP services can be configured for performance clustering and/or HA clustering (depending on the capabilities and requirements of each service).

This is possible through configuration of the application server (ex: JBoss AS / Tomcat). Nuxeo EP relies on the application server for all the network configuration.

Nuxeo EP entirely depends on the Java EE application server for all network related configuration. It is not bind in any way to the physical network configuration of the server. Hence it is possible to change the hostname of the server and restart the machine without causing any problem to Nuxeo EP.

Fail-over relies on JBoss Clustering for Nuxeo EP services. Here is the HA system used for each category of services:

To achieve the highest level of data integrity, Nuxeo recommends storing binary files as BLOBs directly in the database (hence use a RDBMS offering optimized BLOBs storage (such as Oracle or PostgreSQL). Using this mechanism, Nuxeo EP can store all its data into the RDBMS (including request/search engine indexes) and relies on it to enforce data integrity. Moreover, Nuxeo EP is fully transactional and relies on JTA (+ XA) for transaction management (that enforce data integrity across data sources).

Nuxeo EP has been designed to completely rely on RDBMS data integrity (that can be considered trustable nowadays). One can use RDBMS tools to check data integrity/consistency and data failure if any. If the data model is corrupted, Nuxeo EP warns about it when the repository starts. Indexes (from Nuxeo Search) can be verified and easily be rebuilt by reindexing the content if any problem occurs.

The maximal impact is service downtime and data restoration from backups. Data integrity errors are reported in the logs and can then be sent via email notifications, SNMP and any log4j capabilities.

Nuxeo EP offers an applicative data import/export service (using XML serialization of documents) that can be used as an incremental backup/restore system. For an efficient backup system, Nuxeo recommends using native RDBMS tools (that can offer incremental backups, snapshots, hot restore, etc.).

The restoration speed is the native database write performances. We do not have more statistics yet (but should be available by July 2007, benchmark are in progress on this point).

When all datasources for storage are using the same database (the recommended setup), the RDBMS can achieve a consistent backup (usually at low cost for the user service). Restore can only be launched when the system is stopped.

Content object restore can be done using the import/export service. Here is the procedure to achieve this:

RDBMS backup can be handled as usual using legacy backup scripts for this RDBMS. Applicative backups can be launched using the import/export client CLI. There is not supported scripts at the moment (but they could easily be written).