Chapter 6: Advanced Access Control System Requirements and Prerequisites

The amount of time you will need to install Advanced Access Control depends on your existing server build process and electronic software distribution (ESD) solution. There is an extensive list of software prerequisites for Advanced Access Control which in a perfect world should be installed using an automated server build and an ESD solution to ensure consistency and rapid deployment. If you need to install all of the components including the operating system the old fashion way, “manually” the process can be very time consuming and difficult to replicate to multiple Advanced Access Control servers.   
 

Advanced Access Control System Requirements

Advanced Access Control can be installed on all of the Windows 2003 Server editions. Table 6.1 shows which features are supported on each of the Windows 2003 Server editions.

As shown in table 6.1 the Web edition does not support Exchange integration.

List 6.1 below shows the absolute minimum requirements to install Advanced Access Control on a Windows 2000 or 2003 server. Please note that this list does not include any prerequisites to enable Exchange integration, HTML preview or Live Edit.

1. Member Server in Domain
2. 512MB of memory.
3. Windows Server Platforms:
   
   • Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Family with Service Pack 3
   • Windows Server 2003 Standard with all recent service packs and updates
   • Windows Server 2003 Web Edition with all recent service packs and updates (Exchange System Management tools not supported!)
   • Windows Server 2003 Enterprise with all recent service packs and updates
4. Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0 or 6.0.
5. Microsoft Windows Installer 3.0 & above. (WIN2K3 is ready to go)
   
   • On Windows 2000 you can check the version by running "msiexec" from the command line.
6. Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 with Service Pack 1 (WIN2K3 is ready to go)
7. Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) Version 2.7 Refresh  (WIN2K3 is ready to go)
8. Microsoft SQL or MDSE.
   
   • In a multiple server installation SQL should be considered and installed on a dedicated server.

IIS Web Services Extensions Requirements
With IIS 6.0 on Windows 2003 the following Web services extensions must be registered and enabled before you install Advanced Access Control:
• ASP.NET
• Active Server Pages

AAC Installation Sequences

Citrix supports single server as well as multiple server Advanced Access Control installations. A multiple server installation is called an access farm. Additional Advanced Access Control machines can be added at any time to scale an access server farm.

List 6.2 shows the installation sequence for single or multiple server configurations:

1. Install Microsoft SQL Server or MSDE.
   
   1. SQL: Setup a domain service account and create the data base for the Access Farm and grant the service account administrative permissions.
2. Install Citrix Licensing Server.
   
   1. This can be done after the installation although AAC will not work properly without available licenses.
3. Install Exchange System management tools (Required for Email integration with Exchange and for small form factor support)
4. Install Microsoft Office components (HTML Preview)
   
   1. Word
   2. Excel
   3. Powerpoint
   4. Visio
   5. Do Not install Outlook (This causes problems with Email functionality)
5. Install Advanced Access Control. (a domain service account is required)
   
   1. Only select HTML Preview server role
   2. *Do not select any of the Access Center roles (Unless you are going to use the legacy Access Center infrastructure)
6. For Adobe PDF Support (HTML Preview)
   
   1. Install AFPL Ghostscript  located at (http://Sourceforge.Net or http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/)
   2. Install and configure pdftohtml (visit Sourceforge.Net)
7. If RADIUS Support is required install the Microsoft Visual J #.NET Version 1.1 executable file (vjredist.exe) which is on the Prerequisites CD in the JSharp11 folder.

Microsoft Office and HTML Preview
HTML preview leverages Microsoft Office’s Save as Web Page feature.  The Save as Web Page feature will programmatically execute when an office resource is displayed with HTML Preview. At runtime, the COM+ service executes each Microsoft Office application which needs to be running for HTML preview to work.

Figure 6.1 shows the Save as Web Page feature.