Technical Requirements to Host Our Software Locally / On-Premise

This is relevant ONLY to those deciding to go fully "local" - ie not chosing a private cloud or Managed Services option of deployment. Please check out our summary of deployment options to learn more. The requirements are divided into 2 Sections:

• Flows Requirements
• Threads Requirements

Flows Requirements

Requirements for a client-owned data center installation of Flows:

• Linux computing resources
  • These can be virtual machines or bare metal hardware.
  • Linux OS.  We provide support and documentation for Ubuntu (preferred), or Debian.
  • The Linux kernel must be version 6.5.x or newer
  • Total RAM and CPU are usage dependent, 6 virtual CPUs at ~2.0Ghz and 64 Gb total RAM minimum

• Network-attached storage

  • Storage size and IOPS requirements are usage dependent, we suggest 100Gb minimum
  • Backups of the stored files and database must be handled by the customer

• Permit outgoing HTTPS connections to Authentise
  • These connections allow us to bill the installation on a per-transaction basis as well as send emails/SMS notifications using our infrastructure
  • Standard SSL over port 443 at periodic intervals, no customer-owned data is transmitted.

• Incoming HTTPS requests over intranet
  • All services are exposed via HTTPS, so client software must be able to reach the servers over port 443 internally

If the customer has a particular database provider requirement, Flows can be integrated with an existing postgresql (14.x and above) database server and license. Otherwise Flows will allocate some of the NAS and compute resources to running custom postgres on Linux for all of it’s RDBS needs.

If you're intending to use Machine Data as part of your application installation, then you will need Echo. Echo is described here, and needs minimal hardware: a very simple windows computer should do the trick. The only important mark is that this computer must sit on the same network as your printer. For certain printers you may need to install it directly on the PC controlling your printer.

Additionally if the deployment will be using slicing or design streaming to Stratasys printers:

• Windows computing resources
  • Virtual machines or bare metal hardware
  • Windows Server 2012 or Windows 10
  • 8 Gb RAM, 1 2.0Ghz CPU minimum

Flows is architected as a system of microservices that are deployed via containers. This allows for flexibility in allocate computing resources and easy scalability. All deployments of Flows come with a dashboard for monitoring resource utilization to make informed decisions about adding additional capacity to the cluster.

This architecture diagram might help:

Threads Requirements

The technical requirements to host our Threads application locally are as follows: 

• Threads Primary Server
  • Minimum: 4 vCPU, 16GB RAM

• Threads DB
  • Minimum: 2 vCPU, 8GB RAM

• AI Service 
  • Minimum: 8 vCPU, 32GB RAM
  • GPU: 1+ Nvidia hardware needs discussion/trial

• 3D Viewer 
  
  • Server: 4 vCPU, 8GB RAM
  • Database: 2 vCPU, 4GB RAM

• Storage:
  • Shared between all instances
  • 700GB-1TB
  • 200+ GB is taken up by AI