Node is nothing but a computer or server which is created to perform a specific role or a combination of roles.

When Qlik Sense is installed, it installs a series of services, which are used to perform respective tasks. For example, the proxy service will be used to do authentication, session handling, and load balancing, whereas scheduler service will be used to schedule the tasks to reload the applications, and so on.

So when you want to assign a specific task to a single server, you can configure the services on that node to make it perform only that specific task.

There are basically two types of nodes which can be created in Qlik Sense:

• Central node: Central node is responsible for controlling all the services, thus every install of Qlik Sense should have one central node
• Rim node: An additional node which is configured to host one or more services of Qlik Sense to share load of central node

You can also create a node for specific purposes. For example, you can configure a node to behave in one of the following ways:

• Production
• Development
• Both