ALVAO Server – Manual Installation

Admin

The installation of ALVAO Admin is described in the ALVAO Asset Management book.
Next, it is necessary to perform the following steps to set up the communication settings between the Server and the Agents:

1. Open Admin and go to Manage – Asset Management – Monitoring – Settings – the Connection tab to set up the values for communication between the Server and the Agents.
2. Enter the server URL where you want to run the ALVAO Monitoring Portal into the Monitoring Portal Address field, e.g. https://app.alvao.com/Monitoring.
   
3. Select the required option under Authentication method. If you select password authentication, the password has to be identical to those entered during the installation of Agents (see below for detailed description of settings).

Portal

The Portal is a web-based interface that you can use to monitor the activities of individual system users.

Installation Instructions

1. Make sure that the IIS Intranet Server is installed on the machine where you want to install the Portal.
2. If you want to install the Portal on a computer running IIS version 7, it is necessary to make sure that the IIS 6 Compatibility Pack is installed before you continue with the installation.
3. We recommend that you install the ALVAO AppPool .NET 4.0 application pool on IIS. Please click here for more information. This step is not required to run the application, but when installed, the application pool will speed up the process of loading the web portal. If you don't want to create ALVAO AppPool .NET 4.0, please skip to Step 4.
4. Log in as an administrator and run the AlvaoMonitoringPortal.msi installation service.
5. During installation, select the ALVAO AppPool .NET 4.0 application pool. If you didn't create the application pool in Step 3, select .NET v4.5.
6. The installation program creates a local folder (<InetPub>\wwwroot\Monitoring) and a virtual directory in IIS (Monitoring).

Portal Configuration

For the Portal to work correctly, it is necessary to set up the authentication of user credentials. The Portal supports Integrated Windows Authentication or form-based authentication. Select the required authentication method in IIS. We recommend that you use Integrated Windows Authentication.

As the next step, it will be necessary to set up correct connection to the Monitoring SQL database. Open the IIS Administrator and select the Monitoring application. Go to the settings, click on the Connection Strings icon, then click on the Db string and set up the correct path to the SQL Server where you created a database with ALVAO Admin (the default path is localhost and the default database name is Alvao). You can use e.g. localhost\SQLEXPRESS for the SQL Server and Alvao for the database.

The Portal configuration is stored in the Web.config file in the Portal installation folder. You can edit this file manually in any text editor.

Enabling IIS Access to Database

As the next step, it will be necessary to allow the IIS server the database access. Open SQL Server Management Studio (Express), which is part of the SQL Server installation, go to the Security – Logins folder and enable access for the NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE account (if you didn't create the application pool in Step 3, enable access for IIS APPPOOL\.NET v4.5) to the Alvao database with the public, db_datareader, and db_datawriter authorizations. If, while attempting to log onto the portal, a database opening error message is displayed, enable access in the Security – Logins folder on the SQL Server for the account displayed in the error message.

Server

The Server is a central service that evaluates data from client machines. If legacy Agent versions are used on client machines, the Server also downloads data from the Agents. By default, the server is installed as a service, but it can be also run as an application.

1. Launch the AlvaoMonitoringServer.msi installation package.
2. The installation service will install the Monitoring Server to the %Program Files%\ALVAO\Monitoring Server folder.
3. Once the installation has been completed, go to this folder and open the "MonitoringServer.exe.config" file in Windows Notepad. Go to the line:
   <connectionStrings>
      <add name="Db" connectionString="Data Source=localhost;Initial Catalog=Alvao; Max Pool Size=2000; Integrated Security=True" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
   </connectionStrings>
   and set up the database connection. The connection string has the same format as in the "web.config" file in the Portal settings.
4. If you use ALVAO Monitoring Agent versions lower than 6.0 SP2 on some client machines, replace the "False" value with "True" in the following line:
   <setting name="LegacyMode" serializeAs="String">
      <value>False</value>
   </setting>
5. Once installed, the ALVAO Monitoring Server service is stopped. Run the service under My Computer – Manage – Applications and Services – Services – ALVAO Monitoring Server – Run.

Asset Management Collector

1. If you have not installed Asset Management Collector yet, follow these steps to install it.
2. Set up the service following Steps 1 to 4.
3. Then go to Settings and check that the "Download the latest software product library automatically" checkfield is checked on the "SW library" tab.
4. If you want to send information on unrecognized applications, check the "Search for unrecognized software automatically" check box.
5. Click on OK to save the settings.
6. Restart the ALVAO Asset Collector service. The service will follow the settings made under the Settings menu.

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