Deployment Considerations

Essential concepts for deploying Synnax in production.

This page guides System Administrators through the essential concepts they need to deploy Synnax effectively in a production environment. This page will address the topology of a Synnax deployment (clusters, nodes), and the considerations that should be taken into account when deploying Synnax (workload, networking, security, etc.). This page will also link to more detailed guides on deployment workflows.

Key Terms

Node

A node is a running instance of the Synnax database. It is a single executable that can run on Windows, Linux, macOS, or inside of a container. A node’s primary responsibility is to permanently store and serve sensor data to users. It’s useful to think of a node as the heart of a Synnax deployment. All traffic related to data recording, control sequences, and other tasks is routed through and processed by a node.

A node is not the same as the Synnax Console UI. The console UI contains a local node embedded inside for single person usage of Synnax. For deployment in a multi-user organization, it’s common to run a node on a separate server and have multiple users connect to it via the console.

Cluster

A cluster is a group of interconnected nodes that work together in order to function as a single, unified database. Nodes within a cluster will coordinate reads and writes to distribute data storage and processing. This allows a cluster to scale horizontally, growing to meet the needs of its application.

The smallest possible cluster is a single node. The quick start guide is an example of a single node deployment.

While single node clusters are less fault tolerant than multi-node deployments, it’s perfectly okay to deploy Synnax in production with just a single node. As your needs grow, you can add additional nodes in order to balance the workload.

Deployment Considerations

Workload

Perhaps the most important consideration when deploying Synnax is the workload that you expect to place on your cluster. Synnax is designed to handle very data intensive operations, but performance is ultimately limited by the hardware specifications and network quality.

The workloads that Synnax serves are generally split into two categories: real-time hardware operations and long term data storage. We’ll address each of these in turn.

Real-Time Hardware Operations

When using Synnax to control hardware, network stability and latency are the most critical concerns. We recommend deploying Synnax on a local network with a dedicated switch and high quality, well-protected cabling. Generally speaking, it’s best to deploy Synnax as close to the hardware as possible.

For single node clusters, we typically see our users deploy Synnax on the same computer that their data acquisition devices are connected to. Here’s an example of a simple Synnax deployment. It has a central node that is connected to data acquisition devices and operator machines.

We caution against using a cloud deployment or any public network for real-time hardware control, as this poses a significant risk to the stability of your system, and exposes your cluster to potential security threats.

Long Term Data Storage

When using Synnax for long term data storage or low-rate live streaming (less than 5 samples per second), network stability and latency are less critical, and the primary concern becomes sustainable, scalable storage capacity and maximum availability to users.

Our customers typically deploy Synnax on-prem within their own data centers, although deploying Synnax in the cloud with a publicly exposed endpoint is also a viable option. Synnax can run on bare metal, virtual machines, or you can use our docker images to deploy Synnax in a containerized environment. Here’s an example of a cloud deployment with post processing systems, analyst machines, and a custom data application all connecting to a single node cluster:

Networking

Synnax uses two communication protocols: HTTP and gRPC. Understanding the details of these protocols is not necessary for deploying Synnax. What’s relevant is that they both use standard TCP/IP networking.

All Synnax nodes expose themselves to traffic on a single port, which is configurable at runtime. This port is used for cluster internal communication between nodes, as well as for processing incoming requests from clients (console UI, control sequences, analysis scripts, device drivers, etc.).

When running in production, we recommend encrypting all traffic to and from your Synnax cluster with SSL/TLS.

Configuring NTP Clients

The following section assumes that a local NTP server has already been deployed.