CHILI publisher is entirely adaptable to you publishing requirements, but there are a few core components you’ll need in place to get your server — and users — up and running.

Server

  • OS: Windows Server 2016 (English version), 2019
  • Memory: 8GB RAM
  • .Net framework 4.8 for version 6 and onwards
  • CPU: 4 cores (2 cpu x 2 cores)
  • HD: All HD-types will do
  • Connection to the Internet must be enabled.

These are MINIMUM requirements. For use in production environments with large amounts of concurrent users, high throughput of files and/or severe SLA requirements, other values might apply.

Network

Network components when hosting a CHILI publisher application

  • Webserver
  • Application server

The webserver should be accessible for the end-users you would allow.
The uplink from you webserver to the end-user should be a high speed uplink.

In house hosting has the advantage the connection to the local data is very fast (local network) but most upload capacities have no burst capacity.
Consider hosting your application in a datacenter. While you might only use an average of 1Mbit, you can peak to 100Mbit in most datacenters.
This will be a big advantage in moments of hight traffic.

When the CHILI publish service is hosted on a different computer, the netwerk between the Webserver and Application server should be separated from the rest of the network.
Preferably you could make an seperate network (or through dedicated ports on the switch) between these two servers.

NOTE: any URL used to access CHILI Publisher (either directly or embedded within a portal) should also be accessible from the server itself. Some of our components connect to other components (the webservices) through the used URL. This might not show up immediately, but make a habit of either configuring DNS correctly for this, or to add the host name in the server’s hosts file.

Storage (Data)

There is no hard minimum limit to storage. But you’ll need storage for you projects.

Data can be stored locally or anywhere on your network. Nevertheless, access times of network devices will influence the speed of CHILI publisher.

In most cases the actual CHILI publisher Documents won’t take much room on the server. The assets used in your project will take roughly 90% of the storage.

We advise to start with ±100GB of storage.
We also advise to split the application and data on 2 drives.

Mostly the application is installed on the C: drive, and the data points to another (physical or network) drive (e.g. D:)

CHILI publisher will be installed under a separate user. This user needs full access to the data drive.This might be the most important part of the requirements.CHILI publisher performs better with faster disk IO.

Storage speed

Depending on your setup, take into account disk access (read / write) will have influence on the speed of CHILI publisher.

Faster disk IO can be reached with faster disks (SAS, SSD) or with faster RAID setup.
Since we work in a Graphic Arts environments, files can get very large, and thus take more time to read / write on disk.
The fastest speeds we’ve seen so far, are SSD chipsets mounted directly on a PCI-e card.

Browser

The CHILI Editor is used within a browser. When integrated in another web-application, the CHILI Editor will mostly be loaded in an iFrame.

CHILI publish recommends to use the latest versions of a browser.

Client hardware

A “recent” computer with a “decent” internet connection. If you work on a local network, consult your network administrator to check the speed.

  • Min 10Mbit/s Downstream
  • Min 2Mbit/s Upstream

Decent speed for client hardware:

  • Dual core 2Ghz
  • 4 GB Ram or better

CHILI publisher Converter

CHILI publisher Converter helps you to easily
migrate your valuable assets in formats like Adobe® InDesign® and Adobe® Illustrator® into your online publishing setup.

Knowledge

Next to some technical requirements, there are also some knowledge requirements for the users of CHILI publisher. The areas of knowledge depends on the type of user.

End-user

The requirements for the CHILI End-user will vary a lot depending on the application that is offered to the end-user. Service providers using CHILI publisher can configure CHILI publisher to offer a complete locked down document, but can also choose to offer a rather complex document with a lot of business rules in it.

CHILI Content administrator

A CHILI Document consists of elements (frames) with text, images, etc. The document and the content can behave differently depending on some document-business rules you apply to the document.
A content administrator should understand document layout, and should be able to interprete the influence of some scripting on this document. E.g. a document can be portrait or landscape, depending on some settings.
A good reference is, if you have all ready made some scripts in Adobe® InDesign®, you will most certainly find your way in CHILI publisher.

A super administrator

A super administrator should know what a content administrator knows, but should also have knowledge of document organisation. The super administrator has access to the CHILI Backoffice, so he/she should be aware what the influence is on the server, backups, etc.

A super administrator for CHILI publisher should have profound knowledge of the graphical sector / software, and have some basic knowledge of scripting to be able to configure the system to speak with external systems. E.g. to configure CHILI Backoffice to provide a mobile feed to a mobile device, you’ll need to understand the concept of mobile readers, offering documents in portrait and landscape view, etc.

CHILI System administrator

As a system administrator, graphical knowledge is a plus, but when it comes to system tasks, these are the topics you should be familiar with:

DNS
A system administrator should know how to link a FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) to a server.
On the webserver, a system administrator should also know how to link the domainname to a certain website.
Monitoring
It’s important to monitor the health of the system. The overall health consists out of CPU usage, disk usage and memory usage.
It’s important (not only for CHILI publisher) to keep some room on the main system drive. That is mostly used as swap space.
Backup
Backing up CHILI publisher is straight forward. The data is stored in files.
You will need a backup of the configuration files (only when they change), and you will need backups of the user generated data.
Backing up user generated data comes to synchronising a master directory. Restoring the files is as easy as moving the backups files in place.
CHILI publisher
The CHILI publisher application consists of 2 parts: a windows service and a web-application. A system administrator should have knowledge of managing an IIS.

Integrator

As an integrator we expect you to have profound programming skills, combined with graphical skills. You’ll need to talk to the CHILI API through web services, but it’s also handy to know what the difference is between e.g. CMYK and RGB.