The Outscaling module has been around for over five years now, and has been expanded with additional features multiple times and was later renamed to "Outscaling II" (introduced in Smartsite 5.2 release). It's a module designed to synchronize state information and/or content items and other database records between multiple cms instances within different scenario's. Within Smartsite 5 it's an optional module, since you don't always need to synchronize two or more cms instances.

iXperion

Within Smartsite iXperion, Outscaling is now an integral part of the system. The main reason for which Outscaling is being used within iXperion is of course the synchronization of state information between the cms engine and the publication engine.

As you probably know, these two engines more or less live a separate life. They have their own application pool and therefore run within their own process. Whenever an item is added or changed within the cms, the publication engine needs to be notified of this change. This is the responsibility of Outscaling, which runs as a background component as part of the cms engine.

Hence, for a good working environment, it is imperative that your Outscaling configuration is in order.

Documentation

The Outscaling module within iXperion is in fact an adjusted version of the Outscaling II module which comes with Smartsite 5.2 and 5.3. Therefore, (almost) all the concepts, configuration and background information documented on the Smartsite 5 support site also applies to Outscaling within Smartsite iXperion.

Since most of the information found within these ca. 50 articles won't be published on this site any time soon, it is recommended you get a login account for the Smartsite 5 support site as well, if you don't have one already.

The two main entry points for Outscaling documentation on the support 5 site are:

• Outscaling - configuration details
• Outscaling - concepts and technologies

This part of this site focusses on new knowledge base articles, how to's, etcetera.

New features within iXperion 1.2

Outscaling within iXperion 1.2 has undergone a lot of changes. Most of these changes are related to making the configuration for any Outscaling scenario a lot easier. It also includes the new Outscaling Dashboard, as integral part of the Outscaling Console, which is the place to go to get status information about the server instances and the Outscaling actors.

To summarize the new features:

• Outscaling Dashboard.
• Built-in event filtering for the Outscaling EventSubscriber (EventClasses="*").
• Built-in Outscaling Datasources, which makes it no longer required to create specific Datasources.
• Improved logging capabilities.
• Email notification when synchronizing an item or an event fails
  (NotifyFailedEvents and EmailAddress registry parameters within Outscaling Background Component).
• Automatic detection of an inactive Outscaling Background component, and when that occurs it is restarted.
• Files to be synchronized are automatically filtered, to exclude (skip) protected operating system files (such as *.config, *.exe, *.dll).
• Background component now uses a separate view (AutoSyncView), to be able to distinguish between items which should be synchronized automatically and items which may be synchronized, manual or otherwise.