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. Each node must have at least one role enabled.
You can configure a Data Integration Service grid so that some nodes are dedicated to running application service processes while other nodes are dedicated to performing computations. When you enable only the compute role on a node in a Data Integration Service grid, the node does not have to run the service process. The machine uses all available processing power to run mappings. You can add additional nodes with only the compute role to the grid to increase scalability of Data Integration Service mappings.
For more information about setting up a Data Integration Service grid, see the