Get started with Blinkenlights

Blinkenlights is an optional component for Typefi Server 8.6 or later that provides job queuing and load balancing for Adobe InDesign Server. In addition to job queuing and load balancing, Blinkenlights enables:

• Multiple queues
• Prioritised job queuing
• Status visibility
• Job filtering
• Performance metrics
• Logging

Blinkenlights is built using a high availability cluster to ensure it can handle high traffic, and that no data is lost in the result of a server failure. It also supports a RESTful API to submit jobs, and control jobs, servers, and queues. You do not need Blinkenlights to run InDesign Server successfully, but we highly recommend it when you have multiple InDesign Server instances.

Key features

Load balancing — Blinkenlights queues submitted job requests and delegates them to be run on the next available instance of InDesign Server.

Multiple queues — Blinkenlights supports multiple job queues, which map to one or more instances of InDesign Server. When multiple job queues are created, jobs submitted to that queue are routed to one of its associated InDesign Server instances.

Prioritised job queuing — Jobs are delegated to available InDesign Server instances based on the time the job was submitted and its priority. When a job request is submitted with a higher priority that the jobs currently in the queue, that job request is assigned to an InDesign Server instance before other jobs previously submitted with lower priorities.

Status visibility — Blinkenlights enables admins to see the current status of all queued jobs.

Job filtering — Search allows you to filter jobs by highlighting any matches to wildcard search criteria.

Performance metrics — Effectively manage your InDesign Server instances by capturing, visualising, and understanding your job queue data.

Logging — Blinkenlights logs the history of every job; whether it succeeded or failed, the length of time it ran, and which InDesign Server instance it ran on.

User interface

The main view in Blinkenlights is called the Dashboard. The Dashboard shows your job queues, any active or queued jobs and their elapsed or wait times, and your InDesign Servers instances and their status.

On the left side of the screen is the controls menu, which provides quick access to the administrative functions you can perform. The menu options are:

• Search
• Add server
• Add queue
• Metrics
• Test lab
• Settings

At the bottom of the screen is a collapsed Logs tab that provides an at-a-glance view of completed jobs and job warnings or errors. Clicking anywhere on this tab causes it to “slide up” to give you complete access to the detailed logs.

Creating your first job queue

Click Add queue to create your first job queue. By default, new job queues are named "New queue" followed by a unique identifier. For example, "New queue (5c65e41e2d4376770020b9a8)". Enter a new name and then click out of the field to save your changes.

Follow these conventions when naming a job queue:

• Job queue names must be unique.
• You can use numbers and most symbols.
• The name cannot be longer than 255 characters.
• Avoid using control characters or any of the following: * < > : " / | \ ? ; ! ^
• Do not start or end a name with a period (.).
• Avoid starting or ending a name with a space.

After creating your first job queue, add one or more InDesign Server instances.

Adding an InDesign Server

Click Add server to open the Add InDesign Server dialog.

1. Enter the Hostname and Port for your InDesign Server instance. For example, Hostname: ourhost.company.com and Port: 18383.
2. Optionally enter a Nickname to help you more quickly identify a server (note: nicknames must be unique) and assign it to a job queue (newly added InDesign Server instances are automatically added to the unassigned job queue).

Note: You can also move InDesign Server instances between job queues by dragging the server into a new queue.

Note: A single InDesign Server instance cannot be added to more than one queue.