Moving from an evaluation to a production environment

In a typical evaluation installation, all Express Software Manager non-client components (Administrative Console, Express Server, Express Access Point, and Express Reports Web Site) are installed on a single workstation. Once you have purchased Express Software Manager, you will likely want to move one or more of these components to other machines or, depending on the size and network topology of your organization, install additional Express Access Points. This topic presents basic guidelines for moving from an evaluation installation to a production one.

Note: Please take the time to read this information completely including the Important Notes topic before beginning your production deployment.

Before starting the processes described below, you should take a few minutes to plan your production system. Express Software Manager gives you great flexibility in where each of its non-client components is installed. Where you install depends on the number of clients, your server(s) hardware, and your network topology. Here are some general guidelines:

• A server running full SQL Server is recommended for most installations above 500 seats. SQL Server provides more extensive tools and greater scalability than MSDE and your system will perform better and be easier to maintain.

• In most cases, you will need a machine running a server version of Windows (Windows 2003 Server or above) to host your Express Access Point. Workstation installations of IIS do not allow enough simultaneous connections to perform well in larger environments.

• A typical Express Software Manager installation consists of a single database. Depending on the size of your installation and where your clients are located, you can install one or more Express Access Points. Your evaluation starts with a single Access Point (normally located on your evaluation machine) but as you move to production and install more clients across your organization, you can install additional Access Points to more evenly spread the connection load across multiple servers.

• The Express Reports Web Site should be installed on one machine only.

In most environments, you can install the Express Server on the same machine(s) running the Administrative Console. This provides good performance in transferring data between these two components.

The following topics present two scenarios for moving to a production installation.

• Full reinstall—The recommended method for reinstalling the product for your production environment.

• Selective reinstall—Instructions to follow when you need to retain the data collected during your evaluation.

These instructions are not exhaustive; they do not cover every possible scenario, but should give you a general sense of how to go about implementing your production system.