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Running Virtual Cabinet in an Azure Environment

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Summary:

This article contains the guidelines we recommend for running Virtual Cabinet in an Azure environment.

More Information:

Virtual Cabinet can be run in an Azure environment, however, there are a few more factors than usual to consider as shown below. It may be worth running this article past your IT department/provider when considering an Azure environment to ensure that Virtual Cabinet will be able to run when you move over.

Three core components are needed for Virtual Cabinet:

  1. Application Server- Windows Server where the Business Layer and ancillary document services will run from. The Virtual Cabinet client will connect to this machine to return documents.
  2. SQL Server- running the Virtual Cabinet/CCMail database.
  3. File Storage- a location to store all documents indexed in to Virtual Cabinet.

Application Server

Virtual Cabinet requires a Windows Server operating system in order to install the core system services. This server will act as the conduit for documents going between the File Store and the Virtual Cabinet Client program that users will be using to access documents.

Please account for 2GB hard drive space for the installed applications. This can be installed on the Operating System disk if space is available, or on an additional drive.

Please note - If you are using a separate drive, then Microsoft recommends using the Premium disk type for anything other than Dev/Test environments1.

Please refer to our standard Technical Specifications for RAM/CPU usage in your environment.

 

SQL Server

Azure provides two options for SQL Server:

  1. Azure SQL Database– IMPORTANT - This is ONLY supported in Virtual Cabinet version 5.5 and above. All prior releases are NOT supported.
  2. SQL Server in Azure VM- This is the same version of SQL Server installed on non-Azure environments and is supported by Virtual Cabinet. As per a non-Azure environment SQL Server can be installed on the same Windows Server as the Virtual Cabinet Application components, or on a separate server. For smaller sites (<50 users, or less than 500,000 documents), SQL Server Express can be installed with no SQL licensing costs.

If you are installing SQL Server on the same VM as the Application Server then you will need an additional disk to the Operating System in order to install SQL Server and run the database from.

IMPORTANT - Microsoft recommends using the Premium disk type for anything other than Dev/Test environments1.

 

File Storage

Azure provides two options for storing the documents in Virtual Cabinet:

  1. Managed Disk associated with Windows Server- additional disks can be added to the Application Server VM in order to store the Virtual Cabinet documents.
  2. Azure Storage- this is not supported by Virtual Cabinet.

There will be less disk activity with these documents when compared to SQL Server, so if SQL Server is installed on the same server as the other Virtual Cabinet applications you may want to consider separate disks for SQL and the files. 

There are two options for Managed disks:

  1. Standard- cheaper storage, with much lower disk speeds. IMPORTANT - Microsoft recommends usage of this kind of storage for "Dev/Test VM scenarios" 1
  2. Premium- more expensive, with higher disk speeds. IMPORTANT - Microsoft recommends usage for "IO-intensive workloads or hosting mission critical production environment" 1.

Due to Microsoft’s recommendations noted above, we would highly recommend the use of Premium Managed Disks for any Live Environment.

If you do not want to store all Virtual Cabinet documents on a Premium disk, then you should consider splitting up the Virtual Cabinet system in to multiple File Stores on different disks, with older/archive documents on slower storage medium.

 

Virtual Cabinet Client

The Virtual Cabinet Client should be as "close" as possible to the Application Server, to minimise the amount of time it takes to communicate with the Application Server as well as to transfer documents to the Client. Installing the Virtual Cabinet Client locally and accessing the Application Server over the internet is not a recommended method, and will cause performance issues. Where possible a Terminal Server environment should be set up within Azure in order to access the Virtual Cabinet Client. The Virtual Cabinet Client must be installed on a Windows Operating System. Please refer to our standard Technical Specifications for Client hardware specifications.

It is recommended that Microsoft Office is installed on the same server as the Virtual Cabinet Client, so that Office documents stored in Virtual Cabinet can be opened and worked on. Likewise, you will also need a PDF viewer such as Adobe Reader.

 

Scanning

If you are using a local TWAIN compatible scanner that you would like to connect to Virtual Cabinet then you are going to need a program that will connect the local scanner to the Azure remote desktop environment. One such product is called TSScan, which will display the local scanner as a device in the Azure environment so that Virtual Cabinet can connect to it. In this way, Azure is no different to any Terminal Server or Hosted environment.

If you use Network scanners (e.g. photocopiers) and need these to send documents directly to Virtual Cabinet then they will need to be configured to save their scans in specific folders on the Application Server. Please refer to the company who supports your Network scanner in order to set this up.

 

Database Lookups (Intelligent Indexing)

If your Virtual Cabinet system is looking up client data from a secondary Client Management system then you will need to consider how Virtual Cabinet will be able to access this data. The Virtual Cabinet Application Server must be able to query the Client Management database. Therefore, the Client Management database must be stored in Azure as well as Virtual Cabinet, or security must be set up so that queries can be run on the Client Management database from the instance of SQL Server that Virtual Cabinet is attached.

 

Other complementary applications

Considerations should be made for these other applications that can be used with Virtual Cabinet:

  • CcMail- can be installed on the Application Server, and the database should be added to the existing instance of SQL Server that the Virtual Cabinet database is attached to. CcMail must be able to connect to the Exchange environment you are using via IMAP4, whether this is a locally installed version of Exchange, or Office 365 Exchange.
     
  • CcPrint- can be installed on the Application Server. If we are using Virtual Printers in order to send prints to CcPrint then these may need to be accessible outside of the Azure Terminal Server environment.
     
  • Capture Service- the same as CcMail above, but there is no database that needs to be installed.
     
  • Content Search / Indexing Service- will be installed on the Application Server. This server performs disk-intensive OCR on the documents that have been added to Virtual Cabinet, so that users can content search them. If performance is an issue then it should be considered to only run this service out of hours.

References

1 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/storage-about-disks-and-vhds-windows?toc=%2fazure%2fvirtual-machines%2fwindows%2ftoc.json

 

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