What upfront decisions do I have to make before I install production ready Tracardi.

Before installing Tracardi, there are several upfront decisions you need to make to ensure a smooth setup and operation.

Here are the key considerations:

Open Source vs. Commercial: Choose between the open-source version of Tracardi or the commercial version, depending on your requirements and budget. See what are the differences between Open-source and Commercial version?
Deployment Environment: Decide whether you will deploy on Docker, Kubernetes (K8s), or another environment.

Essential Services: Tracardi relies on several dependencies, including Redis, Elasticsearch, MySQL, and optionally Apache Pulsar for event streaming. It is crucial to ensure these services are set up correctly or to plan their installation. Scaling these services is particularly important, especially for Elasticsearch, which is quite demanding in terms of the number of shards that cannot be changed later. For detailed instructions, see how to configure number of shards.
Storage and Persistence: Plan for data persistence by ensuring storage solutions for Elasticsearch and Redis, and understand their configurations for production use.

User Authentication: Configure authentication mechanisms for accessing Tracardi services, such as secure credentials for databases and API endpoints.
Environment Variables: Set up the necessary environment variables for configuring Tracardi components, especially INSTALLATION_TOKEN and AUTO_PROFILE_MERGING. For detailed guidance, see Which environment variables should I set before production installation.
Multi-Tenancy: Decide if you will enable multi-tenancy features to manage different clients or divisions within your organization. See How to start Tracardi in multi-tenant mode?
Data Partitioning: Configure data partitioning strategies for events, profiles, and sessions to optimize performance and storage.
Custom Settings: Customize settings like logging levels, API documentation, and workflow enablement according to your operational needs.

Commercial Licensing: If using the commercial version, ensure you have the necessary license keys and DockerHub access tokens.

Monitoring Tools: Integrate monitoring tools to keep track of system performance and health.
Telemetry Configuration: Set up telemetry to gather metrics and logs, helping in proactive issue resolution and performance tuning.

Backup Plans: Establish regular backup schedules for critical data stored in Elasticsearch and MySQL.
Disaster Recovery: Develop a disaster recovery plan to restore services in case of system failures.