Scheduler Questions

[ashk]

I have been swifting through all the documentation but cant find any good answers to scheduler related questions so i thought i would try here. We currently have 1 Alteryx Scheduler that we are trying to setup so that it runs 24/7 and our users can access it to schedule their work. 

My understanding is that if i provide the user with the Controller Name / Token of the machine they should be able connect to the machine on the network - is this true ? Has anyone tried this and any areas of concern ?

Secondly i get the controller but what is the workers in this context - i understand that they are the processing unit but does that mean workers have to be setup separately as machines ? and assigned a worker role and if yes then how ? There seems to be a one to many relation ship b/w Controller and Worker ? 

I know the controller and the worker can be the same machine but if i want to add additional workers what would that mean ??

Thanks

[RodL]

Check out the document "Alteryx Server Installation and Configuration Guide" that can be downloaded at http://downloads.alteryx.com/documentation.html

It sounds like you may actually have the Alteryx Designer with Automation (which is not intended for multiple machines sending schedules to it).

But if you are talking about the Server product itself, which is where your latter questions would apply, then this document will provide you with what you need.

At a high level, you are correct...there is a one-to-many relationship between Controller and Workers. The Controller controls which jobs are running and which worker they run on. The Workers are where the Alteryx Engine process actually runs a workflow. (As you mentioned, if there is only one machine, the Controller and Worker are in the same configuration on that machine.) If you want to add additional Workers, then you just configure the separate machines to be Worker-only machines. Page 26 on the above documentation covers how to configure.

Also page 15 shows where you find the Controller token.

[ashk]

Thank you for the prompt reply...

How does licensing work for Worker(s) ? or if they are just identified as workers then only their processing power is used and not much to do with their license ? 

slight tandem but do you also know if there is a way to download the workflow from the Scheduler DB (SQLite) ? for instances where workflow gets deleted 

[JordanB]

hi @ashk

If you provide the controller name and token to the end users they will be able to schedule a workflow to the controller machine. Currently providing the controller token to the end user will allow access to all the users you give it too. In the intial Beta release for Alteryx 11.0 there will be some enhanced scheduler functionalities. 

In terms of workers it really depends on how many users are scheduling. If you would like users to schedule simultaneous workflows at one time I would recommend looking at scaling out using additional worker nodes. To add worker nodes they can be set up similar to the Alteryx Server but you will select 'Enable Worker'.

If you add additonal workers they will constantly ping the controller asking for jobs. This is advantageous because it can allow you to quickly scale out as it requires a simple activation of the worker worker nodes will minimal interaction with the controller.

Dependent upon the amount of users scheduling you can still have one worker and a controller on a machine, you would just set it up with 'Enable Controller' & 'Enable Worker' checked in the above screen. 

Here is a layout with additional worker nodes:

Best,

Jordan Barker

Solutions Consultant 

[ashk]

Thank you Jordon -