TeleForm Server Specification

• Pentium 4 2Ghz CPU
• 1GB RAM
• Windows 2000 or 2003 Server
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000 or MSDE
• 1GB free hard drive space
• 100 Mb/s network card
• CD-ROM

The minimum system specification for a TeleForm Enterprise Server is stated as:

• Pentium 4 2Ghz CPU
• 1GB RAM
• Windows 2000 or 2003 Server
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000
• 1.5GB free hard drive space
• 100 Mb/s network card
• CD-ROM

It is worth considering however whether your critical form processing environment should be running on just the bare minimum specification. This article will describe the key hardware recommendations for your server hardware to help you make the most of your new or existing TeleForm data capture system and minimise the possibility of problems in the future.

Understanding The Servers Function

The first thing to be aware of with TeleForm is that the server acts purely as a store for the files and data of your system.  No OCR or image processing is performed on the server.  Older versions of TeleForm allowed the Reader or Designer etc to run on the server, although this was never a supported configuration.  Since TeleForm V9 it is not just a unsupported configuration, but it is also impossible to achieve.

The only TeleForm modules that will run on the server are the TeleForm Monitor and License Service, neither of which require much RAM or processor time.  This means that the most important specifications of a TeleForm server are the ones that support the SQL database and file system, these are usually memory and hard drive speed.

Memory

A clean install of Windows 2000 or 2003 Server will typically use less than the first 512MB of RAM for normal operation.  This means that whatever is left will be used by SQL Server.  On a clean server a total of 1GB (512MB for Windows and 512MB for SQL) should be OK but if other applications are running such as Exchange or on-line de-fragmentation tools it is important to have more memory. 

Bear in mind that it is possible to have more than one instance of SQL running and each will require its own memory.  Multiple databases on one "instance" is OK, but SQL can have several isolated installations on the same server called "instances".  Some applications such as Network Associates Protection Pilot virus scanner management tool may install their own instance of MSDE to store information and statistics which will require its own memory in addition to the TeleForm instance!

SQL Server will automatically use all available memory, so if you have 2GB of RAM in your server and SQL is using up all available memory it doesn't necessarily mean that expanding your memory will result in a performance increase.

Hard Drives

Although the requirements suggest up to 1.5GB of hard drive space is required, even a full Enterprise installation takes up less than 512MB.  The additional space is required for storing the scanned images.

An A4 image scanned at 200dpi will take up approximately 40KB depending on the amount of grey and shading.  This means that if you are scanning two thousand four page forms per day and have your automatic purge set to a month you could have approximately 7GB of images on your system at any one time.

40KB × 4 pages × 2000 per day × 5 days per week × 52 weeks a year ÷ 12 months per year = 6933333KB or 6.6GB

It is worth rounding the 6.6GB up to 7GB to account for indexing and tracking data and cluster size wastage etc

As storage is cheep and it is impossible to buy a hard drive smaller than about 40GB now, the space is rarely the issue but this doesn't mean the hard drives should not be given careful consideration.  As hard drives are the only part of a server with physically moving parts they are the slowest and often the bottle neck to performance.  It is essential to have some form of fault tolerance on your servers hard drive configuration.  For more information please see our Hard Drive FAQ.

As the hard drive will be the main limiting factor on your servers performance it is well worth considering the latest Ultra 320 SCSI drives or at the very least some striped (RAID 0) SATA Raptor drives.

Processor

Although none of the TeleForm modules are compiled for 64bit or dual processor support the operating system and SQL server can of course take advantage of both of these, if you have the right versions.  The speed of the processor will also have an effect on performance but unless you are planning on processing in excess of 10,000 forms per day and assuming the server is dedicated to TeleForm any Pentium 4 above 2GHz will be suitable.

Windows

Windows 2000 Server or 2003 Server is required.  Any edition including Standard or Advanced will work OK.  We recommend making sure all the latest updates are installed from the Windows Update web site.

Although not a certified configuration we have successfully installed V9.1 Workgroup on to Windows NT4 servers as long as an existing SQL server is also available.

SQL Server

TeleForm Workgroup will run with any version of SQL Server 2000 including the free MSDE or the commercial Standard and Advanced editions.  TeleForm Enterprise requires the full SQL Server 2000 so will not work with the free MSDE version.

SQL 2005 will be certified for use with TeleForm from TeleForm V10.  It is possible to buy SQL 2005 licenses and "downgrade" them for use as SQL 2000 licences.  We can also confirm that we have successfully installed TeleForm V9.1 Enterprise on a SQL 2005 server with no problems at all.  If you would like any further information on this please contact us.

Glossary

Byte - A measure of memory equal to 8 binary digits (1s or 0s)

GB - Gigabyte, a measure of memory (one binary digit × 8 × 1024 × 1024 × 1024)

CPU - Central Processing Unit, the main processor in a server or PC

GHz - Gigahertz, a measure of processor speed (1 Hertz × 1000 × 1000)

MB - Megabyte, a measure of memory (one binary digit × 8 × 1024 × 1024)

Mb/s - Megabit per second, a measure of data transfer speed (1Mb/s = 128KB per second)

MSDE - Microsoft Database Engine, the free small scale, distributable version of SQL Server

RAID - See our Hard Drive FAQ.

RAM - Random Access Memory, the main working memory of a server or PC

SATA - See our Hard Drive FAQ.

SCSI - See our Hard Drive FAQ.

SQL - Microsoft's database.  Also stands for Sequel, a common database programming language