On-Premises Installation Planning Checklist

The purpose of this document is to provide a checklist to help streamline our Processing on-prem installation.

Please have your IT Admin (defined below) complete the following configuration checklist. Once they have completed this checklist, please reach out to your Reveal contact, or email [email protected] so that we can schedule the installation meeting. The below assumes that all machines are running as VMs in a virtualized environment.

1. IT Admin

   1. Please identify a team member who has the proper IT administration rights to the environment to create accounts, access to all machines, and the rights to configure all machines. This IT Admin should have all account usernames and passwords listed below for the purposes of our installation meeting. This IT Admin will be required to take part in the installation meeting. When you reply all to this email, please provide the contact information for the IT Admin.

2. Full Administration Manual

   1. This is the Reveal Processing full administration manual for on-prem installation. Specific sections within this document are highlighted in the sections below. For a high level understanding of the environment please see the sections Reveal Processing System Overview Diagram.

3. Downloads

   1. SQL

      1. NIST Precompiled Database

         1. This is the NIST precompiled database to run DeNISTing in the application. Please download this and copy the unzipped contents to the desktop of the SQL Server.

   2. DM/DA

      1. Processing Installer

         1. We will send you the link to the installer once we have scheduled the installation meeting. This allows us to provide you the most current version of the software in the event a newer version is ready for installation.

      2. Test Data Set

         1. This is our test data set that we use to validate environments. Please have this download to the network storage that all machines can access.

4. Machine Creation

   1. For the purpose of the installation, we need at least 3 machines created. Once we have validated these machines, we can then clone and create additional DM/DA machines where necessary.

      1. Machine 1: SQL Server

         1. For this machine, please install the latest version of Microsoft SQL Server you have access to. The minimum version we accept is SQL Server 2012 x64.

      2. Machine 2: Discovery Manager

      3. Machine 3: Discovery Agent

      4. Machine Configurations and Notes

         1. We prefer the latest version of Microsoft Server OS as the OS for all machines. The minimum version we accept is Server 2012 R2 x64.

         2. The faster the storage, the better the experience.

         3. All VMs should dynamically share the processor, but the RAM must be dedicated to the VMs and not shared dynamically.

         4. All machines should be fully patched with the latest Windows updates.

         5. If you are going to run antivirus, you must configure it according to our AV Configurations.

         6. If firewalls will be used in this closed system, please make sure that the SQL, DM/DA, and storage can all communicate. Our communication ports are available in the Reveal Processing System Overview Diagram.

5. SQL Configuration

   1. Account Creation

      1. There are two ways the platform can access SQL. The first is via Active Directory, and the second method is creating a SQL Login through Microsoft SQL Server. We assume that you will be utilizing Active Directory. If this is the case, the user group associated with SQL should have the dbcreator role applied to all users within the group. If this is not the case, please let us know, and we will provide you further instructions.

   2. SQL Configurations

      1. Turn on Mixed Mode Authentication.

      2. Enable named pipes on the SQL Server. Please click here to see an article that lists this configuration.

      3. Limit the max amount of memory that the SQL Server can take, leaving at least 4 GB RAM for the OS. So if you allocated 64 GB RAM to the SQL Server, you would leave 60 GB for SQL.

6. DM/DA Configuration

   1. Account Creation

      1. Discovery Agent (DA)

         1. Please have the IT Admin create a Windows service account (typically a domain account) that will administer the Discovery Agents. This account should have access to all storage in the environment. We will use this account to install and run all Discovery Agents.

      2. Discovery Manager (DM)

         1. Please also have the contact have a typical user account. We will use this account to access the Discovery Manager to launch jobs to the Discovery Agents.

   2. Machine Names

      1. Reveal offers both internet and non-internet based licenses for on-prem processing. If the machines will be on the internet, or allowed access to our licensing server’s IP address via a pinhole through the firewall, please skip this section. Clients utilizing autoscaling or administering large environments typically prefer this method, as license management is much easier. If these machines will be offline, we will need the machine names to generate the license keys for each machine separately. This does not mean these machines need to be built prior to our meeting, we simply need the names to create license keys for them. Please provide us these names prior to the validation meeting.

   3. Microsoft Office

      1. Please make sure each of the machines have Microsoft Office 64-bit version 2016 or later, and the default mail profile is created per the Outlook Installation instructions. Please note, if licensing is a concern, the DA machines only need Outlook, but the DM machines should have full office installed.

   4. Lotus Notes

      1. Please install Lotus Notes on the machine if you plan to evaluate the processing of Lotus Notes. You can use the free evaluation copy of Lotus Notes for this process if necessary.

   5. Online

      1. If possible, we would like the machines online just for the installation. This makes the installation process much easier as there are so items that the system will go out and install if they are not on the machine.

7. Validation

   1. Once we have everything installed, we will utilize the Test Data Set to validate the environment.