Admin: Installation

Overview

The RPI server is installed using the Server Workbench application. Before running Server Workbench, please ensure that the account as which you have logged in is a member of the local Administrators group on the machine upon which the cluster core is to be installed.

Pre-Installation Preparation

Prior to installing the RPI Core, use the following checklist to ensure that all pre-requisites have been met.

Pre-Requisite	Met (Yes/No)?
A physical or virtual core server.
For each additional cluster node: a physical or virtual core server.
A data warehouse/marketing operational data store. The data warehouse can reside on one of the cluster node machines; however, this configuration is not recommended.
All servers are joined to a domain. Workgroup membership is neither recommended nor supported.
All servers are running Windows Server 2019 (recommended), Windows Server 2016, Windows 2012 R2 or Windows 10
All servers are configured with an SSL server certificate issued by a Trusted SSL Certificate Authority. Self-signed certificates are not recommended. If running in a clustered environment, a wildcard or SAN certificate are required.
A physical or virtual server running an instance of SQL Server 2017 (recommended), 2016, 2014 or 2012, or PostgreSQL v12, upon which the core and client operational databases will be installed. This server can, but does not have to, be part of the RPI cluster. It is recommended that both the cluster node and operational databases machines are on the same domain.
The Server Workbench user has local administrator access to the RPI cluster servers.
If hosting the operational databases in SQL Server, the installing user’s domain account has sys admin permissions on the operational database SQL Server instance.
If installing on non-English servers, the Server Workbench user is a member of one of the following manually-created user groups (with attendant administrative permissions): Administrators Redpoint Interaction Administrators
The domain, or Network Service, account(s) used to run the nodes’ Windows services have administrator access to the server(s) upon which the services are to run. If using Network Service, the account must be added to the Administrators local group separately on each server.
Each cluster server has the latest .NET version (currently v4.8) installed. If installed on a machine where IIS is installed, .NET must be installed after IIS.
If a server is to support the Web services and/or Help roles, the following are installed and/or enabled: Internet Information Services (IIS) v8 or 10.
If Web services and Help files roles are installed at more than one node and true clustered support for these services is to be made available (e.g., failover in the event of node failure), this is configured separately using an appropriate tool (e.g. IIS load balancing). Such configuration is beyond the scope of this document.
The data warehouse is hosted in one of the following technologies. See The External Provider Supported Versions documentation for versions against which certified. SQL Server SQL Server PDW Netezza Oracle Teradata GreenPlum MySQL Sybase IQ AWS Redshift PostgreSQL Actian VectorH Splice Machine DB2 Azure SQL Database Azure Synapse Analytics Vertica MariaDB Azure Database for MySQL Azure Database for PostgreSQL Google Big Query Snowflake Amazon Aurora (MySQL) SAP HANA SybaseIQ Yellowbrick MongoDB (NoSQL) Couchbase (NoSQL) CosmosDB (NoSQL)
If auxiliary databases are to be used, they are hosted in one of the data warehouse technologies listed above, or in one of the following: MongoDB (SQL) Apache Hive Apache Spark http://Salesforce.com MarkLogic Apache Cassandra Azure CosmosDB Apache Drill/MapR Amazon Redshift Spectrum Amazon Athena Google BigTable Google Spanner Presto Amazon DocumentDB (NoSQL) Google Datastore (NoSQL)
If hosting the operational databases in SQL Server, the database user has the following permissions: Create Database Create Table Create Role Create View …and the following permissions on any object in the operational databases: Alter Delete Execute Insert Select Update
If hosting the operational databases in PostgreSQL, the database user must exist prior to installation.
Folders required by the RPI servers have not been created in advance. Rather, they should be created as part of the installation process; Server Workbench cannot guarantee that folder permissions will be assigned correctly if this is not the case, which may result in errors.
A valid RPI License is available, requested through support@Redpointglobal.com upon launching Server Workbench for the first time.
The date/time between the operational database server and the cluster nodes is in sync.
The operational databases and data warehouse have the same regional settings as the cluster nodes.
If installing RPI on Windows Server 2012 R2, the following specific pre-requisites are in place: IIS o Web Server Role .Net Framework Features o HTTP Activation o Named Pipe Activation o TCP Activation Note that, in some circumstances .NET 4 & IIS are not bound properly; best practice is to follow the instructions for the http://ASP.NET IIS Registration Tool. Finally, ensure that the ‘Friendly name’ in the Trusted SSL Certificate can be resolved by DNS (preferably), or by way of an update the clients’ local hosts files.
A reachable SMTP server that can send emails from the RPI Server to users' email addresses is available. Required to send out links for password set/reset.
The RPI service name is resolvable by all machines where the RPI client will be run and that they can access the RPI server on port 443.