About multiple Interact runtime servers

When you install more than one Interact runtime server, you must configure the runtime servers that constitute a server group to use the same runtime tables, profile tables, and learning tables, and one or more instances of the Marketing Platform accessible by each server group. There are also specific configuration settings for monitoring and deployment to be aware of.

All Interact runtime servers in a single server group must use the same schema for runtime tables, profile tables, and learning tables.

For the best performance, install each production Interact server group with its own instance of Marketing Platform, although this is not a firm requirement. Generally, Interact runtime servers in the same server group use the same instance of Marketing Platform, as in the following example:

Install and configure Marketing Platform and Interact runtime on the first server and ensure that they are configured and working correctly.

Install only Interact runtime on the second server. Provide the same Marketing Platform data source details and credentials that you used for the Marketing Platform installation on the first server. This configuration registers the second Interact server to use the same instance of Marketing Platform.

Use the URL of the first Interact runtime server and the second server in a single server group in your Interact design time configuration.

Although not required, you can also install a unique instance of Marketing Platform for each Interact runtime server, or a few instances of Marketing Platform supporting subsets of runtime servers. For example, if your server group contains 15 runtime servers, 5 runtime servers can report to one instance of Marketing Platform, for a total of three instances of Marketing Platform.

If you do plan to have multiple instances of Marketing Platform, the general Interact configurations must match across all instances of Marketing Platform for a server group. You must define the same runtime tables, profile tables, and learning tables for all instances of Marketing Platform in each server group. All Interact servers that belong to the same server group must share user credentials. If you have separate Marketing Platform instances for each Interact server, you must create the same user and password on each.

If you are installing a test environment and have multiple Interact runtime servers on the same system:

If you are configuring JMX monitoring for Interact servers that are running on the same system, you must configure each Interact runtime server's JMX monitoring to use a different port and instance name. Edit the JAVA_OPTIONS in your web application server startup script and add the following options: