Introduction

XTRF Platform is a Java-based web application that can be available in one of the following options:  

• You may use the XTRF Platform as an on-cloud service. In that case, the XTRF team is responsible for all maintenance, including testing, monitoring, and upgrading. This is the recommended solution as it has the lowest entry and maintenance cost.

• You may also have your XTRF Platform on your local machines. This article presents a list of requirements for running it. Advanced server management expertise is required when choosing this option.

Server administrators can use this guide to get an overview of the hardware and software requirements necessary for your XTRF Platform. While planning the infrastructure, you need to take into account how many users will be accessing the available XTRF portals: Home Portal, Client Portal, or Vendor Portal. You should estimate how many peak visitors you have to get the maximum number of browsers simultaneously making requests. Users are counted from their first page request until the connection is closed. Remember that the storage requirements vary depending on how many files and other resources you want to store on the XTRF Platform.

Please bear in mind that this is only guidance, and your configuration may require more resources at your discretion.

Please note that:

• It is not possible to upload files to XTRF Platform using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), instead SFTP should be used.

• It is not possible to host XTRF Platform on popular "web hosting" services

Hardware Requirements

The hardware requirements depend on the number of visitors accessing XTRF Language Business Platform at a given moment (concurrent active users). Please find below the infrastructure recommendations for your installation of the XTRF Platform.

XTRF Platform on Virtual Machine

If you use virtualization, please notice that you should assign at least 2 dedicated cores to the XTRF virtual machine (VM), not a single core. Additionally, please bear in mind that sharing resources between multiple VMs decreases the XTRF Platform performance.

Basic Installation

The requirements in the following section apply to the installation where there are up to 10 concurrent users:

Medium-sized Installation

 When planning infrastructure for medium-scale XTRF Platform deployment, please bear in mind the following partial requirements:

• PostgreSQL database requires:

  • CPU: Fast

  • RAM: 4GB or more

  • Hard disk: RAID1 composed of 2x 120+ GB SSD, but NVMe is strongly recommended

• XTRF/JBoss application requires:

  • CPU: As fast as you can get (single-core performance matters)

  • RAM: At least 16GB is required, 24 GB is recommended

  • Hard disk: 100 GB free space for the application and logs

• Storage:

  • File storage requires a medium to big redundant hard disk, preferably with a spare (RAID) and backup. This is used for project files and database backups.

All of the above can be fulfilled by a single server, and that's a recommended solution.

Concurrent Users up to 30

If there are up to 30 concurrent users, you can run the entire application on a single server-class type motherboard; the following requirements must be fulfilled: 

Concurrent Users up to 50

If you have more than 30 concurrent users but up to 50, you can use a server with the following specifications:

Large Instances

For large instances, it may be worthwhile to contact the XTRF Management Support team for expertise on hardware sizing, testing, and performance tuning. Simply contact our Support team for a recommendation.

First, you should prepare a staging/testing environment to understand your resource utilization, given your specific product requirements and workflows.

Other Hardware Requirements

Disk Space

If you intend to install the XTRF Platform on the existing server or on a virtual private server (VPS), please note that it requires at least 100 GB of free disk space. This requirement does not include the space for your translation projects, where the size of the stored files might be even 1 TB or more if your company translates large files.

Internet Connection

XTRF Language Business Platform, as a Web application, requires fast Internet access. This includes both browser access and, optionally, FTP for transferring project files. If you are hosting the XTRF Platform in your translation office, it is recommended that you have at least a broadband, symmetric bandwidth connection with a 50 Mbps link in both directions. Note that you may notice slowdowns or periodical packet loss with a smaller bandwidth.

Accessing the system from the Internet requires having a public, routable IP address and a domain name.

Network Topology

When planning your XTRF Platform's architecture, you need to take into account that the distributed system may cause additional delays. Therefore, locating a database server as close as possible to an application server to reduce any additional delays is advisable, as connection latency significantly impacts the application performance.

Software Requirements

The sections below cover the software requirements and specifications for the XTRF Language Business Platform. 

Operating System

XTRF Platform should run on Debian Linux (or derivatives). It is highly recommended that the operating system be set up in English.

It is recommended that your antivirus software be disabled or that the database directories be excluded, as it is known to cause serious performance degradation.

We do not provide any support for operating systems other than the ones listed above.

Database

A PostgreSQL database is required to run the XTRF Platform. The PostgreSQL database is an open-source object-relational database system that is very reliable and extensible.

Please note that the XTRF Platform is not compatible with MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle, and other databases.

Java

XTRF Language Business Platform is a Java-based Web application. XTRF Platform uses Java Runtime Environment (JRE), which is automatically installed on Debian servers during XTRF’s installation process as a dependency.

Firewall settings – open ports

XTRF requires opening 1 TCP port to your clients and 2 TCP ports locally. Depending on the configuration, the ports are:

For inbound traffic

• TCP 443 - standard HTTPS communication between the browser and the proxy server - usually, this is the only port that needs to be open to clients.

• TCP 8443 - standard HTTPS internal port of xtrf-jboss application (mainly used by the proxy server if https is used as the backend protocol or if clients connect directly to the jboss-xtrf application), should not be publicly exposed.

• TCP 8009 - standard AJP internal port of xtrf-jboss application (mainly used by the proxy server if ajp is used as the backend protocol), should not be publicly exposed.

For outbound traffic

• Mandatory:

  • TCP v1.endpoint.license.xtrf.eu:443 - XTRF's license server. You may verify the connectivity by opening the License server test on your server.

  • TCP 5432 - standard port of the postgresql server (used by the xtrf-jboss application to connect to the database), only if connecting to a database on a remote server

  • Google Cloud Platform services (for Chat related features)

  • SMTP connection depending on your e-mail provider (for sending emails)

• Optional

  • TCP xtrf_trados_agent_server:8081 - The XTRF Trados agent  - replace "xtrf_trados_agent" with the IP or DNS name of the host which hosts the agent instance (only if Trados integration is used)

  • TCP memoq_server:8080 or TCP memoq_server:8443 - default memoQ server web connector ports (only if memoQ integration is used)

  • Other third-party services, depending on individual integrations

Additional remarks

• DNS is required to operate correctly

• NTP is required to keep time synchronized

• Local hostname must be resolvable for the e-mail to work correctly

• XTRF Platform should be exposed to the Internet only through HTTPS reverse proxy, on a standard 443 port. SSL Certificate installation