UPDATE: Thursday, January 26th, 2012
Through California Oregon Advanced Transportation Systems (COATS) area research efforts, several web-based research products have been developed, including the WeatherShare system, the Integrated Corridor Management Clearinghouse (ICM) system, the One Stop Shop for Traveler Information system (OSS) and the Integration of Aviation Automated Weather Observation Systems (AWOS) with Roadside Weather Information System (AWOS/RWIS). These systems have been recognized as valued products in improving transportation services. Currently these products are being used while running in a laboratory environment and many of the factors related to transitioning them to a production/deployment environment have not previously been fully addressed.
This project examined requirements and decisions to be made to successfully transition a web-based product from the laboratory environment to the production environment while ensuring a reliable and maintainable final system. The needs of the WeatherShare, ICM, OSS, and AWOS/RWIS systems were evaluated and analyzed according to the following factors:
- Host requirements
- Networking
- Storage
- Processing
- Software
- Software revision
- Documentation
- Product support
The network and storage needs of the combined WeatherShare, ICM, OSS, and AWOS/RWIS systems were determined, including total networking bandwidth (data in and data out), and data storage space for the program, static data, and dynamic data. The current hardware configuration has been running and shown to have adequate processing and memory capacity and could be used as a base line for host system requirements. However, expansion of the web applications in terms of geographic coverage or functionality may require an increase in storage capacity.
The project team examined the software and made general recommendations for revisions required to make each system production ready regardless of the host platform. Best practices were identified for examining and reworking client and server code for the production environment, as well as several improvements to consider to ensure the database is production ready. Items that should be included in system/operation documentation were outlined along with potential product support issues.
Three viable options for external hosting were described including a dedicated server, a dynamic cloud server, and an elastic cloud server. Ultimately for systems such as the ones being examined here, the elastic cloud server may be the most intriguing option as it will allow adjustments according to the variable nature of usage and an easier reaction to added capabilities of the system.
For more specific details about this project and recommendations, you can review the report here. You can also access the report from the COATS Documents page and the COATS Phase 4 Documents page.