Plan for your installation

The topics in this section describe the components, prerequisites, and some common deployment scenarios for K2. Use the information here to plan your K2 installation and integration with third-party technologies.

It is important that the person installing K2 understands the relationships between the various K2 components, as well as their organization's existing network and IT architecture. They should also understand concepts like networking principles, Kerberos, Network Load Balancing, IIS configuration, Domain Configuration, and SQL Server best practices.

K2 components

The K2 platform consists of many components that work together. For more information see understanding K2 components.

Prerequisites and supported software versions

When you plan and prepare for your K2 installation, read the topics on software and hardware requirements and apply those requirements to your environment. Also, review the Compatibility and Support Matrix for information on specific versions of software that K2 supports.

Environments

Best practice in application design recommends more than one environment to support the typical development-test-deploy stages of a software development life cycle. Most organizations have multiple K2 environments. For example, environments for development, testing and production. You should plan out which environments your organization requires, where you will install those environments, and how you secure them against unauthorized use.

Accounts used in K2

Various system and user accounts and permissions are necessary when installing, configuring, and running K2. For more information see Accounts used in a K2 Installation and Required permissions.

Firewall ports

For network traffic to flow between systems, various firewall ports need to be opened. For a guide on the ports used by K2, see Firewall ports and K2.

Topologies and Tiers

You can install K2 on many different configurations, depending on your organization’s needs. The Supported Topologies section introduces a number of installation configurations, from simple single-server environments to multi-server distributed farm environments.

To plan for a scalable environment, consider the following:

K2 Server Tier The K2 Server is the server responsible for hosting the K2 application windows service and supporting components, effectively the Application Server. This tier can be scaled out onto multiple servers to allow for redundancy and high availability.
Web Tier The K2 web components (such as the K2 Workspace (Deskop), Runtime and Designer websites, web services etc.) can be scaled out onto multiple servers to allow for redundancy and high availability.
Database Tier Scaling out the K2 database onto multiple clustered servers can increase performance.

Best Practices

Once you understand the components, environments, and topologies, review the topic Tips and Best-Practices for recommendations on planning and installing your K2 environment.