Installing FME flow for the first time. Looking at it from IT perspective, not an FME user myself. Current users are using FME Form on Windows, and I’m upgrading this FME Flow server. We have very low load, but growing and so I’m moving our “operations” from under a user’s desk to our data center. We mange a lot of Windows and Linux systems, but prefer Linux when there’s a choice, and Linux is genuinely fully supported by vendor. Initially I thought it had to run on Windows do to ArcGIS jobs which apparently requires Windows ESRI DLLs. But upon closer read of docs, it appears that a distributed install allows all components on Linux except engine(s) for ArcGIS jobs. While I lean toward Linux, I also favor simplicity and eschew unnecessary complexity, and obviously a distributed install is more complex, but depending on the specific software, more complex doesn’t necessarily mean that much more work. I don’t however need fault-tolerant
Any recommendations? Windows single-system? Distributed Linux + Windows engine?
An express install on a Windows Server alongside appropriate licensed Esri software will be the simplest way.
If you did want to install the core components on Linux and run an engine on Windows you can do this via Remote Engine Services (https://docs.safe.com/fme/html/FME-Flow/WebUI/Remote-Engine-Services.htm) or a fully distributed setup (https://docs.safe.com/fme/html/FME-Flow/AdminGuide/Adding_FME_Engines_on_Separate_Machine.htm)
Something to consider with having only a subset of engines running on Windows with Esri licensing is that the administrator will need to setup queues to direct tasks requiring Esri licensing to the engine(s) on the Windows host. Users will also need to be aware of this so when they submit jobs they utilise the correct queue(s).