Preparing Windows Server

This chapter gives you information on how to prepare Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 servers for installation of Parallels H-Sphere components and notes you should consider before proceeding to the installation.

Notes:
- We don't install Parallels H-Sphere on live servers.
- On Windows, the users group by default has the read/write permissions on all disks. Upon Parallels H-Sphere installation, the users group is stripped of the read/write permissions on the system directory and other directories that may affect hosting. No other permissions are modified. If needed, change them by yourself.

Hardware and Partitioning Requirements

For better functioning we recommend having not less than 256 MB RAM. And as for partitions it's better to break it into two:

• C:\ for system files and program files - at least 5 GB.
• D:\ for users' content - the rest of the HDD.

Important: partition containing users' content must be NTFS formated to support disk space quota.

Software Requirements

Before installing Parallels H-Sphere to Windows platform, make sure your system complies with the following software requirements:

1. 32-bit only version of Windows
2. Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2003 Servers, Windows 2003 Web Edition (more on Microsoft Server 2003 limitations: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/overview/default.mspx)
   a) must not be PDC (Primary Domain Controller), i.e Parallels H-Sphere cannot be installed on Windows 2003 SBS because it works only as PDC
   b) must not be in Active Directory mode
3. Terminal Service or pcAnywhere for remote access to the computer
4. Both, the system disk and the one with user homes, must have NTFS file system
5. External IP
6. IIS (Internet Information Server) service set up for WWW service and FTP service
7. FrontPage extensions version 4 or higher;
8. ASP.NET 1.1

   The following ports must be open:

   • 20, 21 (FTP)
   • 80 (HTTP)
   • 443 (HTTPS)
   • 873 (Rsync)
   • 10125 (SOAP).

     Parallels H-Sphere includes support for Parallels H-Sphere Windows Services. When creating a new account on winbox, Windows service method is run with SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). It's a new protocol of data communication between CP and Windows server. To enable support for Win services in Parallels H-Sphere, go to hsphere.properties file and set:

     SOAP_SUPPORT = true

     Also, make port 10125 available on Windows server. This port is used to connect to Windows services by default. It can be set in the hsphere.properties file:

     SOAP_PORT = 10125

9. These are the default ports for *SQL servers to be open if your customers connect to them via ODBC:
   • MySQL - 3306
   • PostgreSQL - 5432
   • MS SQL-1433

     Note: If *SQL server is put on any port other than the default, don't forget to open it.
     To access Windows boxes via pcAnywhere or Terminal Service, the ports 5631 and 3389 correspondingly must be open.

Third party commercial products are purchased separately and must be installed prior to Parallels H-Sphere:

• MS SQL server
• Real Server
• ColdFusion
• Miva

The following noncommercial third party products should also be set up prior to the Parallels H-Sphere installation:

• Webalizer: please download Webalizer 2.01.09.RB07 supported by Parallels H-Sphere from http://download.hsphere.parallels.com/shiv/WinBox/wb09RB07.exe
• ASP.NET 1.1, ASP.NET 2.0 (see also ASP.NET Support)
• ActivePerl
• PHP 4.3.1 and higher .

  Note: To make sure you have all required libraries necessary for proper work of PHP, install PHP from the zip archive, not self-extracting executable. The mentioned libs are also needed for correct work of Webshell.

• MDAC 2.8 and higher.

NTFS Permissions For ActivePerl and PHP

Upon the completion of ActivePerl and PHP installation, please set the following permissions on the PERL and PHP directories and their content. They are required so respective libraries can be run when Perl or PHP scripts are requested via http.

These permissions are set during Parallels H-Sphere installation and aren't checked by Parallels H-Sphere updates, so please don't modify them afterwards.

Peculiarities of Parallels H-Sphere work under Windows 2003

Please consider the following when you intend to install Parallels H-Sphere on Windows 2003 servers:

1. Parallels H-Sphere works with IIS 6 compatible mode.
2. In Parallels H-Sphere shared SSL scheme works with IIS 6.0.
3. CDONTS object library doesn't work on Windows 2003. We recommend using CDO instead of CDONTS on all Windows servers, since it is a newer and more flexible.

Other Requirements

1. SOAP property must be turned on in the hsphere.properties configuration file on the CP server. SOAP port 10125 must be opened in your firewall.
2. If you use Windows 2003 R2 system, install the File Server Resource Manager component before Parallels H-Sphere installation.