Experian Pandora is a self-contained client/server product which runs on most java-compliant operating systems oncommodity hardware . It takes full advantage of 64-bit architectures, and is multi-threaded and linearly scalable.
Experian Pandora can be installed as a full client/server or multi-user installation, please view our installation guides for Windows and Linux once you have acquired the relevant hardware for your business needs.
We strongly recommend that you ensure that any anti-virus software installed does not check the directories containing Experian Pandora data files, and any system sweeps are scheduled to run outside of office hours, or periods where data loading will occur. This is to avoid any performance drops that might happen during critical operations.
These are recommendations and as such should be utilized as a reference point, all specifications provided don't have to be followed to the letter but rather used as a way to determine the type of component needed to obtain an acceptable level of performance for the range of business uses in question.
They will be provided in four types based on common usage levels: Minimum, Small, Medium and Large workloads.
Important: These are the minimum specifications that will allow you to make use of Experian Pandora; however, we don't recommend running Experian Pandora as we're unable to guarantee that you will see acceptable performance unless you're a single user running the product on a single machine.
| Component | Minimum |
|---|---|
| Operating System (OS) | Windows 64-bit (7 and 10, Server 2012 R2 and Server 2016), CentOS Linux 64-bit, Red Hat Linux 64-bit, Ubuntu Linux 64-bit |
| Processor (CPU) | Intel Core i3 2ghz Dual Core (Intel i3 6100) 1 User |
| Memory (RAM) | 8GB available for Experian Pandora and OS (any running 1333Mhz) |
| Disk (HDD, SSD etc) | 7,200rpm HDD for OS and any SSD for Experian Pandora |
| Network Card | Gigabit Ethernet |
| Component | Minimum |
|---|---|
| Operating System (OS) | Windows 32-bit or 64-bit (7 and 10) |
| Processor (CPU) | Intel Core i3 2ghz Dual Core (Intel i3 6100) |
| Memory (RAM) | 1GB |
| Disk (HDD, SSD etc) | Any HDD ~300Mb free space for client install |
| Network Card | Gigabit Ethernet |
This would typically be for 1-3 or 1-4 users
| Component | Recommended |
|---|---|
| Operating System (OS) | Windows 64-bit (7 and 10, Server 2012 R2 and Server 2016), CentOS Linux 64-bit, Red Hat Linux 64-bit, Ubuntu Linux 64-bit |
| Processor (CPU) | Intel Core i7 4.0ghz Quad Core (Intel i7 6700K) 1-3 Users Intel Xeon 3.5ghz Six Core (Xeon E5-1650) 1-4 Users |
| Memory (RAM) | 16GB available for Experian Pandora and OS (Any running 1600Mhz) |
| Disk (HDD, SSD etc) | 7,200rpm HDD for OS and SAS Drives or SSDs for Experian Pandora |
| Network Card | Gigabit Ethernet |
Processor
Fewer and slower cores will still function with a corresponding decrease in throughput and longer load times. The ability to support multiple users will also be reduced as a result.
Memory
This is based on the needs of the operating system and the Experian Pandora application. For larger workloads with many users, more memory will be required. Additional memory will provide additional performance benefits when loading very large datasets.
Disk
Experian Pandora will benefit from using the fastest hard drives possible, ideally 15,000rpm SAS drives or Enterprise Solid State Disks (SSDs). It is recommended that RAID-5 or RAID-10 be used for data storage, which gives both redundancy and parallel throughput. Temporary storage can use RAID-0.
Disk throughput should exceed 150Mb/s sustained with average disk seek below 8ms for optimal performance.
| Component | Recommended |
|---|---|
| Operating System (OS) | Windows 32-bit or 64-bit (7 and 10) |
| Processor (CPU) | Intel Core i3 2ghz Dual Core (Intel i3 6100) |
| Memory (RAM) | 4GB |
| Disk (HDD, SSD etc) | Any HDD ~300MB free space for client install |
| Network Card | Gigabit Ethernet |
The Experian Pandora client adopts a thin-client approach in that it performs presentation only. The main requirement is sufficient display resolution to allow the end-user maximum productivity.
By default, the application uses maximum of 512MB memory. The remainder is required for the operating system. Power users may require 1GB of application memory for optimum performance. The 4GB recommended memory is specified in the table above as most PCs come with at least that as standard, which provides plenty for the OS to utilize.
This would typically be for 3-6 users
| Component | Recommended |
|---|---|
| Operating System (OS) | Windows 64-bit (Server 2012 R2 and Server 2016), CentOS Linux 64-bit, Red Hat Linux 64-bit, Ubuntu Linux 64-bit |
| Processor (CPU) | Intel Xeon 2.6ghz Eight Core (Intel Xeon E5-2640) 3-6 Users Dual Intel Xeon 3.5Ghz Six Core (2x Intel Xeon E5-1650) 3-6 Users |
| Memory (RAM) | 32GB available for Experian Pandora and OS (any running 2133mhz) |
| Disk (HDD, SSD etc) | Multiple SAS Drives or Enterprise SSDs setup with Experian Pandora on a separate drive to the OS |
| Network Card | Gigabit Ethernet |
Processor
Fewer and slower cores will still function with a corresponding decrease in throughput and longer load times. The ability to support multiple users will also be reduced as a result.
Memory
This is based on the needs of the operating system and the Experian Pandora application. For larger workloads with many users, more memory will be required. Additional memory will provide additional performance benefits when loading very large datasets.
Disk
Experian Pandora will benefit from using the fastest hard drives possible, ideally 15,000rpm SAS drives or Enterprise Solid State Disks (SSDs). It is recommended that RAID-5 or RAID-10 be used for data storage, which gives both redundancy and parallel throughput. Temporary storage can use RAID-0.
Disk throughput should exceed 150Mb/s sustained with average disk seek below 8ms for optimal performance.
| Component | Recommended |
|---|---|
| Operating System (OS) | Windows 32-bit or 64-bit (7 and 10) |
| Processor (CPU) | Intel Core i3 2ghz Dual Core (Intel i3 6100) |
| Memory (RAM) | 4GB |
| Disk (HDD, SSD etc) | Any HDD ~300Mb free space for client install |
| Network Card | Gigabit Ethernet |
The Experian Pandora client adopts a thin-client approach in that it performs presentation only. The main requirement is sufficient display resolution to allow the end-user maximum productivity.
By default, the application uses maximum of 512MB memory. The remainder is required for the operating system. Power users may require 1GB of application memory for optimum performance. The 4GB recommended memory is specified in the table above as most PCs come with at least that as standard, which provides plenty for the OS to utilize.
This would typically be for 5 or more users
| Component | Recommended |
|---|---|
| Operating System (OS) | Windows 64-bit (Server 2012 R2 and Server 2016), CentOS Linux 64-bit, Red Hat Linux 64-bit, Ubuntu Linux 64-bit |
| Processor (CPU) | Dual Intel Xeon 2.6ghz Eight Core (2x Intel Xeon E5-2640) 5+ Users |
| Memory (RAM) | 120GB available for Experian Pandora and OS (any running 2133mhz) |
| Disk (HDD, SSD etc) | 4 x 400GB 12G SAS SSDs (RAID 0, for Experian Pandora data), total of around 1.5TB 2 x 300GB 6G SAS 15k rpm HDDs (mirrored, for OS), partitioned to 60GB (OS), 160GB (Temp) |
| Network Card | Gigabit Ethernet |
Processor
Fewer and slower cores will still function with a corresponding decrease in throughput and longer load times. The ability to support multiple users will also be reduced as a result.
Memory
This is based on the needs of the operating system and the Experian Pandora application. For larger workloads with many users, more memory will be required. Additional memory will provide additional performance benefits when loading very large datasets.
Disk
Experian Pandora will benefit from using the fastest hard drives possible, ideally 15,000rpm SAS drives or Enterprise Solid State Disks (SSDs). It is recommended that RAID-5 or RAID-10 be used for data storage, which gives both redundancy and parallel throughput. Temporary storage can use RAID-0.
Disk throughput should exceed 150Mb/s sustained with average disk seek below 8ms for optimal performance.
| Component | Recommended |
|---|---|
| Operating System (OS) | Windows 32-bit or 64-bit (7 and 10) |
| Processor (CPU) | Intel Core i3 2ghz Dual Core (Intel i3 6100) |
| Memory (RAM) | 4GB |
| Disk (HDD, SSD etc) | Any HDD ~300Mb free space for client install |
| Network Card | Gigabit Ethernet |
The Experian Pandora client adopts a thin-client approach in that it performs presentation only. The main requirement is sufficient display resolution to allow the end-user maximum productivity.
By default, the application uses maximum of 512MB memory. The remainder is required for the operating system. Power users may require 1GB of application memory for optimum performance. The 4GB recommended memory is specified in the table above as most PCs come with at least that as standard, which provides plenty for the OS to utilize.
You will commonly hear or be concerned about the following terms with storage for Experian Pandora:
| Type | Average throughput in MB/s | Average latency in ms (read/write) |
|---|---|---|
| HDD | 150 – 600 | <9 / <5 |
| SSD | 500 – 2400 | 0.5 / 0.1 |
| SAS HDD | 300 – 1500 | <9 / <0.9 |
See below for further information on some of the storage types available.
Standard hard disk drives are not something we recommend, this is purely from a performance standpoint. The only time you'd be happy with one is if you do very little work that is not of a time sensitive or critical nature. These typically come with 5400rpm or 7200rpm, which dictates how quick they can retrieve data on their disks.
Standard solid state drives are again recommended for light workloads due to the finite lifespan. We do recommend Enterprise level SSDs as they provide the performance of a standard SSD but have the purpose built life span required for a server based environment and can deal with both high volume and time sensitive data.
Expect to see average performances of 500MB/s – 2400MB/s throughput with read/write latencies (response times) consistently below 0.5ms and 0.1ms respectively.
These are basically Enterprise level HDDs that are developed with 24/7 uptime in mind and typically come in 10k or 15k rpm speeds. We recommend these for systems that Enterprise SSDs are not convenient for. The 15k SAS HDDs will provide you a vastly improved performance over normal consumer HDDs. This includes being built with servers and high workloads in mind.
Expect to see average performances of 300MB/s – 1500MB/s throughput with read/write latencies roughly in the figure of < 9ms and < 0.9ms respectively.
This allows each server to access shared storage as if it were a drive directly attached to the server. Unfortunately, due the many variables in creating a SAN we can't give conclusive performance results. Something to be aware of for reference though is as follows:
A SAN is not a monolithic entity. If you take a switch-based Fibre-Channel SAN as an example, the I/O path that is considered part of the SAN starts from the host bus adapters (HBA) all the way to the eventual disk media on the disk array. Hardware components on this I/O path typically include switches, inter-switch links, front-side adapters, disk array cache and processors, disk controllers, and disk drive media. In addition, there are layers of software on this path, including various drivers, firmware, and APIs. Every single component on this I/O path has the potential to significantly alter the performance characteristics of a drive presented from the SAN.
The above is a statement from the blog at_: http://www.sqlteam.com/article/which-is-faster-san-or-directly-attached-storage#sthash.RRvlQT9W.dpuf_
We share similar views and based on that we are unable to recommend SANs because their implementation involves too many variables, many of which might be completely out of the hands of us or end-users.
Experian Pandora can be happily run on virtual machines with smaller datasets. Anything for larger datasets or intensive work it's worth noting that certain things need to be taken into account if you hope to get maximum performance from its full capabilities.
