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Pure requirementsPure requirements

Software Requirements

The following software is needed to install Pure

Upcoming deprecation

Going forward, for legacy on premise customers, Pure will only support "on premise installation of Pure" using the Postgres database on a current version Linux server. For more details see this page.

 

Java

Pure requires a Java Developers Kit (JDK) installed on the server.

It is recommended to use a 64-bit version of Java as most Pure installations will require more than 4 GB memory.

Supported platforms

Tomcat Server

Pure requires a Tomcat servlet container installed on the server.

Supported platforms

Database

Pure stores all metadata in a relational database, so a database should be available for Pure during installation.

Pure supports PostgreSQL.

Supported platforms

PostgreSQL

To use PostgreSQL with Pure the following configuration is needed:

  • Create table
  • Create sequenceHelpjuiceHelpjuiceHelpjuice

To get the best performance on PostgreSQL, set default_statistics_target to 10000 in the configuration file. This ensures that the query optimizer has access to detailed information about the data distribution in Pure.

The following minimum memory settings should also be used: temp_buffers = 32MB ; work_mem = 32MB; shared_buffers = 512MB.

It is recommended to use UTF-8 encoding, and the locale should be set according to how you want results to be sorted in Pure.

Ensure that the PostgresSQL database is created with the public schema.

 

Browser

To complete the Pure installation you will need to access Pure through a web browser that supports JavaScript and AJAX

Supported platforms

Pure Hardware Recommendations

CPU

Pure's performance is directly linked to CPU performance. Our current recommendation is at least dual Intel Westmere X5670 (2×6 cores + HT = 24 CPU’s for the OS, 2.93 GHz). We do not recommend SPARC.

Our experience with SPARC hardware is that it is optimised for running applications where the work can be cut up into relative small "work units", these work units can then be executed in parallel on the many cores provided by the SPARC CPU. In Pure our work unit is a page request by the end user, and unfortunately our experience is that this is too large to provide really good performance on SPARC CPUs.

Memory

We recommend a minimum of 8 GB memory for a server running Pure. We recommend 16 GB memory for large installations.

If you plan on running the database on the same server as Pure you should give it at least double the memory of a server running only Pure.

Disk Storage

We recommend minimum 70 GB disk storage for Pure's system data. The storage needed for full-text files depends very much on your organisation's full-text file deposit policy, so we recommend storing full-text data on an expandable file system; e.g. a SAN.

The database will in most cases use from 5 GB to 30 GB, mostly depending on how long you choose to keep the Pure job logs in the database.

The SQL Server transaction log can become very large, we have seen a few instances with a transaction log close to 100 GB size.

 

Server Example

Example of a recommended server for running Pure. This will be able to run both the database and Pure on the same server. The example here is a Dell server, but any vendor will do.

Updated on 2020-07-23

Module
Description
Base
Dell PowerEdge R640
Chassis configuration
2.5” Chassis with up to 8 Hard Drives and 3PCIe slots, 1 or 2 CPU
Configuration of RAID
RAID 10
RAID-controller
PERC H730P RAID Controller, 2Gb NV Cache, Minicard
Processor
Intel® Xeon® Silver 4210R 2.4G, 10C/20T, 9.6GT/s, 13.75M Cache, Turbo, HT (100W) DDR4-2400
Extra processor
Intel® Xeon® Silver 4210R 2.4G, 10C/20T, 9.6GT/s, 13.75M Cache, Turbo, HT (100W) DDR4-2400
Memory
4 x 16GB RDIMM, 2933MT/s, Dual Rank
Harddisks
4 x 480GB SSD SATA Mix Use 6Gbps 512 2.5in Hot-plug AG Drive, 3 DWPD, 2628 TBW
Price ~44.000 DKK ex. VAT

 

Virtualisation

Pure runs in virtualised environments. We use VMware, but other platforms are also supported.

The following quote from Atlassian sums up or experience very well:

Atlassian on VMware

VMware Virtual Machines, whilst being extremely convenient and fantastic, also cause particular problems for Java applications because it's very easy for host operating system resource constraints such as temporarily insolvent memory availability, or I/O swapping, to cascade into the Java VM and manifest as extremely unusual, frustrating and seemingly illogical problems. We already document some disk I/O metrics with VMware images. Although we now officially support the use of virtual instances we absolutely do not recommend them unless maintained correctly.

This is not to say that VMware instances cannot be used, but, they must be used with due care, proper maintenance and configuration. Besides, if you are reading this document because of poor performance, the first action should be to remove any virtualization. Emulation will never beat the real thing and always introduces more black box variability into the system.

 

In short, Pure will run in a virtualised environment, however, the setup and maintenance of such an environment is solely up to the customer (we cannot provide assistance in tweaking or tuning such an environment, as there are too many variables). If a customer experiences performance issues with Pure when running in a virtualised environment, then we recommend removing the virtualisation - if not, then any tweaking and optimisations in such an environment must be carried out by the customer on its own (we do not have the resources to assist in setting up or validating a virtualised environment).

Review

We are happy to review a brief description of any environment being considered, please just go through your normal Elsevier contact person.

 

Published at February 27, 2025

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Table of Contents
  1. Software Requirements
  2. Upcoming deprecation
  3. Java
  4. Tomcat Server
  5. Database
  6. PostgreSQL
  7. Browser
  8. Pure Hardware Recommendations
  9. CPU
  10. Memory
  11. Disk Storage
  12. Server Example
  13. Virtualisation
  14. Atlassian on VMware
  15. Review
Related Articles
  • Supported platforms
  • Development, Test, or Production mode
  • Handle.Net
  • MODS Publication field mapping
Keywords
  • requirements
  • pure
  • software requirements
  • postgresql
  • tomcat
  • supported platformes
  • pure hardware recommendations

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