Uniscope Prerequisites

 

Thanks for choosing Uniscope for your Lync or Skype for Business monitoring and reporting needs! Our award-winning products will give you better visibility into your servers, users, and workloads, but to do that there are some prerequisites and system requirements that we want to make you aware of before beginning your installation. This document outlines the system requirements for Uniscope only. If you are intending to install additional features like Mailscape, Mailscape 365, Compass, and Foresite, then please review the ENow Management System (EMS) Prerequisites document.

 

Basic architecture

Uniscope is a feature of the ENow Management System (EMS) and it consists of several components that must be set up or installed during the installation process: 

- The EMS web server is the central collection point for data and provides the monitoring and reporting interface for administrators.

- Individual servers being monitored will run workload-specific clients. For example, there are separate clients for Uniscope that run on all Lync servers to report data back to the EMS web server.

- All EMS monitoring and reporting data is stored locally in a proprietary database.  When SQL integration is enabled for reporting flexibility, additional data is stored in a SQL server database.  This SQL database can be located on the same computer as the EMS web server role, but when Mailscape is enabled as a feature we recommend a dedicated SQL Server instance on another computer.  In organizations that have separate database management teams responsible for database administration, ENow’s software supports the use of an existing SQL Server instance as long as permissions, CPU, and memory are assigned appropriately.

 

Active Directory requirements

· The EMS web server should be in the same Active Directory Forest as the on premise servers (Mailscape requires that the EMS web server be in the same domain) it is monitoring. The only exception to this requirement are servers monitored that are located in a DMZ or EDGE network.

· Our security model requires that 2 Active Directory security groups be created and named exactly "Mailscape_Admins" and "Mailscape_Users". If the user account used to install EMS is a member of the Domain Admins security group, these groups will be automatically created. If you create them manually, please plan to enter the URL http://actualwebservername:20080/Mailscapeweb in the “Notes” attribute of the "Mailscape_Admins" security group.

· For Uniscope specifically, we also require that 2 additional Active Directory security groups be created and named exactly “Uniscope_Admins” and “Uniscope_Users”.

 

Network requirements

· TCP port 20080 must be open in both directions between the EMS web server and each client machine.

· TCP ports 5985 & 5986 must be open in both directions between the EMS web server and any Lync Front End server being monitored by the ENow Lync Service. This will provide Uniscope with access to execute Lync remote PowerShell commands programmatically.

· TCP 1433 must be open between the SQL Server computer hosting the EMS database instance and the EMS web server.

· TCP ports 80 & 443 must be open in both directions between the EMS web server and any Lync Front End server being monitored by the ENow Lync Service. This will provide Uniscope the ability to verify all available Lync URLs that are configured.

 

 

System requirements for the EMS web server

· EMS may be installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1(we also require PowerShell 3.0 & .NET Framework 4.0) or Windows Server 2012 R2 or later.

a. ENow recommends, but does not require, that you install the most current set of available Microsoft security patches.

· The IIS role should be enabled and configured with all available role features including IIS6 compatibility.

  

ENow SQL Service account permission requirements: all products

· The ENow SQL Service Windows service requires a service account that has the DB Owner role on the SQL Server computer for the “Mailscape” database and local administrator rights on the EMS web server.

- If the DBA pre-creates this database before EMS is installed, you will need to manually create and assign permissions to the service account.

- If the “Mailscape” database is created by our installer, we will create the service account and assign it the db_owner role on the database.

- If Uniscope is enabled as a feature, then the following explicit permissions are required to be effective on the LcsCDR and QoEMetrics databases: CONNECT, EXECUTE, SELECT.

· The ENow Lync Service Windows service performs tasks for Uniscope related features only and is configured to run as local system by default.

- The Uniscope monitoring test for the Central Management Database server will require the local system to have the following explicit permissions are required to be effective on the LcsCDR and QoEMetrics databases: CONNECT, EXECUTE, SELECT. If your security model does not allow for the local system account to be granted this permission, then a domain account should be configured and also set to run as the ENow Lync Service account.

 

Database and storage requirements

· Our initial method of data storage requires a built in database to exist and grow on a local drive on the EMS web server.   It is recommended to configure the built in database to be on a separate drive from the page file.  Please plan to check sizing guide that is available from the EMS User Guide.

· When SQL integration is enabled, we store monitoring and reporting data in SQL Server. You’ll need a computer running SQL Server 2008 or later, with an empty database instance named “Mailscape”. This database instance can be pre-created by a SQL DBA at any time.

 

ENow Management System 7.0 IIS Web Server Configuration Recommendations For Uniscope Feature Only (If enabling additional features like Mailscape, then please use the ENow Management System (EMS) Prerequisites document for sizing your Web and SQL servers) 

# of mail boxes/enabled users

Dedicated IIS Web Server specifications

Dedicated SQL Server specifications

CPU

RAM

Disk Space

CPU

RAM

Disk Space

1-750

1 Core

2 GB

1 GB

1 Core

2 GB

1 GB

751-2,000

2 Core

2 GB

2 GB

2 Core

2 GB

2 GB

2,001-10,000

2 Core

4 GB

3 GB

2 Core

2 GB

3 GB

10,001-20,000

2 Core

4 GB

4 GB

2 Core

2 GB

4 GB

20,001-40,000

4 Core

8 GB

6 GB

2 Core

4 GB

6 GB

40,001-80,000

4 Core

8 GB

8 GB

2 Core

4 GB

8 GB

80,001-160,000

4 Core

12 GB

12 GB

2 Core

4 GB

12 GB

160,001-240,000

4 Core

12 GB

16 GB

2 Core

4 GB

16 GB

240,001-320,000

4 Core

16 GB

24 GB

4 Core

6 GB

24 GB

320,001-480,000

6 Core

16 GB

32 GB

4 Core

8 GB

32 GB

480,001-640,000

6 Core

24 GB

48 GB

4 Core

12 GB

48 GB

640,001-960,000

6 Core

24 GB

64 GB

4 Core

16 GB

64 GB

Disk Space usage estimates for IIS WEB (12 months) and SQL (6 months) servers are based on average daily Lync or Skype for Business usage. For environments larger than 960,000 mailboxes, please email support@enowsoftware.com for configuration recommendations.

 

Service Account permission requirements: Client software

Each Uniscope monitoring client is installed on its respective target server by running the ENowClientSetup.exe executable, which installs the appropriate client according to the target server role: 

· Uniscope Client on Lync 2010, Lync 2013, and Skype for Business servers

· SQL Client on SQL server 2008 and later (this client type should be used for SharePoint and Lync or Skype for Business server SQL back end role servers).

 

The following table shows the permissions required for the service accounts used by each client type. Note that all of the clients will require .NET Framework 3.5 or higher and PowerShell 2.0 or higher.

 

Client

Service(s)

Required configuration

Notes

Uniscope

ENow Client & ENow Admin

· Member of the local administrator’s security group

· Member of the RTCUniversalServerAdmins security group (EDGE role servers do not have this requirement)

This client should be installed on all Lync or Skype for Business server roles except for the SQL back end. Please plan to install the SQL agent on SQL back end role servers.

SQL

ENow Client & ENow Admin

· Member of the local administrator’s security group

· Assigned the following SQL roles: db_datareader, db_ddladmin, & SQLAgentReaderRole

· Assigned the following SQL permissions: VIEW ANY DEFINITION, ALTER TRACE, VIEW SERVER STATE, & VIEW DATABASE STATE

The SQL sysadmin role is optional for integrity check overdue alerts and to allow SQL Monitor to turn on the deadlock trace flag.  This flag is required for Deadlock alerts to be raised.  A SQL sysadmin can turn on the flag manually in the event that SQL sysadmin permissions cannot be granted to the service account.