Installation Guide for Multiple User Planning

Description

The purpose of this installation guide is to detail the procedures and steps necessary for installing and configuring Inventory Controller XE on Microsoft Windows SBS 2005/2008 server operating systems.

By following the procedures as outlined in this guide the installation process will typically complete within an hour.

It is critical that the recommendations described within are followed to ensure long-term support and maintenance of the installation can be provided by Datapel Systems. On completion of these procedures the server will be configured with a ready-to-use Inventory Controller XE.

AUDIENCE

The intended audience for this article is Accredited Datapel Partners (ADP) and IT Personnel.

Detail Steps

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

 This document assumes that:

• Windows SBS is installed and configured on your server
• User and computer login accounts have been created
• The local area network is fully functional
• Client computers are members of the Windows SBS network

Note:

If clients are connecting remotely to terminal services, the router must have been configured to forward terminal services traffic to server.

TERMINAL SERVICES RESOURCE

The following support note describes a recommended method of resource planning for a Terminal/Application Server.

This procedure should only be followed by authorised IT system administrators or Datapel support technicians.

This information is for a TYPICAL implementation and each site implementation should be thoroughly reviewed based on its unique requirements.

INFORMATION:

In planning the maximum number of concurrent Remote Desktop Sessions that can run on a single 32/64-Bit Windows Terminal Server you should consider the following factors:

Speed, type and number or CPUs installed on the terminal server. The amount of RAM installed in the terminal server Server's Host Operating System, Client settings, i.e. local resource redirection, screen resolution & color depth. Other services running on the terminal server, i.e. Active Directory, Exchange, SQL Server (NOT recommended), Bandwidth available for Terminal Services sessions (a main consideration for WAN connections), End-user applications being used in each session, i.e. Microsoft Office, Acrobat Reader, Internet Explorer.

This support article provides the RECOMMENDED configurations as sourced from various software suppliers and typically used inconjunction with Inventory Controller XE.

The optimal configuration of ICXE is on a Terminal Server or Application Server.
Centrally installing ICXE dramatically reduces total cost of ownership as upgrades need only be done on the server, forms and templates can be centrlised, and Remote Destop support is simplified as Datapel can remote control individual user sessions and provide live on screen support.

The currently supported operating systems are;

There are Five typical IT configurations that support the ICXE solution:

1. Small Business Server – Domain Controller / Email Exchange Server.
In this configuration ICXE / MS Office are installed on the SBS box – to facilate users Datapel recommends XP Unlimited as an integrated RDP Server.

This configuration is only supported up to 4 USERS.
It is important to note that OUTLOOK EXPRESS must be used in this configuration not OFFICE OUTLOOK.

2. Windows Server 2008 R2 as Domain Controller and Separate Windows Terminal Server 2008.
Recommended for 5 users to 10 Users.

3. Windows Small Business Server – Application Server as XP Pro/W7 hosting RDP server. As above

4.  SQL Terminal Server - Single Windows Server 2008 R2 as SQL and Single Windows Terminal Server 2008. 
Recommended for 10 or more users.  

5. Workstation Installations – in this configuration the SQL server is typically installed on the server and each workstation is configured to communicate to the server directly.

This is the least desirable configuration as performance is totally dependent on the configuration of each client. In our experience client computers contain many user applications and are typically resource limited.

RESOURCE RECOMMENDATIONS:

Terminal Server Recommendations 
Microsoft recommends for Terminal Server: 

• OS - Windows Server 2008
• RAM - 5 Users 6GB, 10 Users 10GB, 15 Users 12GB and 20 Users 15GB or more.
• HDD - Base of 4GB + 20MB per user

SQL Server Recommendations 
Microsoft recommends for SQL Server:

• Processor - Quad Processor 
• OS - Windows Server 2008 R2
• RAM - Base of 8GB  or more
• HDD - Base of 8GB + 40MB per user 

Other Recommendations: 
Highly recommended to review attached file "Datapel Systems Requirements Guide" for further details.

• SAS Hard Drives or 10,000 RPM

• If your server only supports 2 hot swap hard drives, putting everything on one RAID1 Array is the best configuration.

• For Network to have 1GB Ethernet.  

• SATA Drives/Partitioning and RAID 5 is NOT Recommended.
  

Related Information

None