Data residency regulations: Remote sample and respondent data
Some countries and institutions have data residency regulations that require participant/sample and/or respondent data is kept far from the cluster performing interviewing.
Support for a respondent database remote from the cluster
Please also see the new feature Additional sample management objects can be configured to improve web interview start performance for ways to increase sample management performance in this configuration.
To configure the cluster
1 In the country that requires data residency, set up an SQL Server.
Give the UNICOM Intelligence Services user created at install time dbCreator and Public roles for this SQL Server instance.
If you want to use Survey Results, also give the Anonymous user dbCreator and Public roles for the instance.
2 Add the SQL Server instance name to the SampleMgtGUI.config.xml file to make it available for sample uploads in Participants.
3 If many interviews are run at the same time, you might be able to improve performance by decreasing the value of the MaxCommandsPerConnection property from its default value of 5000.
To change the value, create a MaxCommandsPerConnection property in Server\Projects\<ProjectName>\mrInterview.
Tests were done with its value set to 30; some users have set it as low as 10.
Test results
In tests, where the ping time to the remote server averages 187ms, using the default value of 5000 for MaxCommandsPerConnection gave an average page‑to‑page time of 54.9 seconds.
Changing the value to 30 gave an average page‑to‑page time of 8.5 seconds, and a maximum page‑to-page time of 24.7 seconds.
Therefore, you should spend time tuning the value of MaxCommandsPerConnection before using this configuration.
To configure the projects
Repeat these steps for each project:
1 Create a new project in UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server Admin.
2 Open the Project Editor for the new project.
3 On the Connections tab, click Edit, and then change the Data Source value under Case Data Location to the remote SQL Server that you set up (that is, the one in the country that requires data residency).
4 If a sample is required, upload it using Participants. Make sure that you select the remote SQL Server instance.
5 Upload the project mdd, and then activate the project.
See also