How to configure Sitecore processing server?

Question

I just installed Sitecore Experience Platform and configured it according to the Sitecore scaling recommendations for processing servers.

But I want to know the following things:

   1.How can I use the sitecore processing server?

   2.How can I check whether processing server is working fine?

   3.How collections DB data is processed and send to reporting server?

Answer 1

The processing server is a piece of the whole analytics (xDB) part of the Sitecore solution. More info can be found here.

Snippet:

"The processing and aggregation component extracts information from captured, raw analytics data and transforms it into a form suitable for use in reporting applications. It also performs specific tasks on the collection database that involve mass updates.

You implement processing and aggregation on a Sitecore application server connected to both the collection and reporting databases. A processing server can run independently on a dedicated server, or on the same server together with other Sitecore components. By implementing multiple processing or aggregation servers, it is possible to achieve higher performance on high-traffic solutions."

In short: the processing server will aggregate the data in Mongo and processes it (to the reporting database). This can be put on a separate server in order to spare resources on your other servers. I'm not quite sure what it all does behind the scenes and how to check exactly and only that part of the process, but you could check the the reporting tools in the Sitecore backend, like Experience Analytics. If those are working, you probably are fine. Also, check the logs on the processing server - that will give you an indication what he is doing and if any errors occur.