The node type determines whether the node can serve as a gateway or worker node and determines the domain functions that the node performs. One gateway node serves as the master gateway node for the domain. The master gateway node receives service requests from clients and routes them to the appropriate service and node. A worker node is any node not configured to serve as a gateway. The first time that you install the Informatica services, you create a gateway node and the Informatica domain. When you install the Informatica services on other machines, you create additional gateway nodes or worker nodes that you join to the domain.

The node role defines the purpose of the node. A node with the service role can run application services. A node with the compute role can perform computations requested by remote application services. A node with both roles can run application services and locally perform computations for those services. By default, each gateway and worker node has both the service and compute roles enabled. If a node is assigned to a Data Integration Service grid, you might want to update the node role. Enable only the service role to dedicate the node to running the Data Integration Service process. Enable only the compute role to dedicate the node to running Data Integration Service mappings.