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From within the Server Manager Dashboard, publish the jiwa.exe application deployed to the C:\Program Files (x86)\Jiwa Financials\Jiwa folder

RDS CAL Licenses

Note that the RDS server requires CAL licences for each user – this is a once-off purchase, and you can obtain these from various on-line retailers.  Once you have your licenses, configure the license manager of remote desktop services to use them.

SQL Azure

In the Azure portal, provision a new SQL Server - it is recommended to use the Virtual networks option to allow only access from the same virtual network both the AADS and VM are in.

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To use an RDS VM it must connect to either a domain controller or Azure Active Directory Domain Services

Remote Desktop Services

Note that the RDS server requires CAL licences for each user – this is a once-off purchase, and you can obtain these from various on-line retailers 

HTML 5 client

Jiwa Connections Template

Once you have your databases established, configure Jiwa on the RDS server with the desired connections.  These connection definitions are stored per user in a JiwaConnections.XML file, but the Jiwa application will seek a template JiwaConnectionsTemplate.XML in the Jiwa program files folder if the user had not previously configured any connections.

Copy the JiwaConnections.XML from the %appdata%/Jiwa Financials folder to C:\Program Files (x86)\Jiwa Financials\Jiwa 7\JiwaConnectionsTemplate.XML to give users a pre-defined list of connections when they run Jiwa.

Remote Desktop Web Client

To allow your users to easily obtain their remote app rdp file from a browser, configure Remote Desktop Services accordingly.

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Once logged in, the published applications can be clicked on to download the .rdp file 

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And when the rdp file is opened in the users local Windows environment, the application appears as a normal Windows application to the user

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HTML 5 client

Remote Desktop Services can be configured to deliver a HTML5 web client of the published applications.  This may be desired over the RemoteApp solution.

hosts file

In order for the RDS VM to be able resolve DNS requests to itself using the FQDN, an entry should be added to the hosts file.

Edit the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts file to point the FQDN to 127.0.0.1

This will allow you to, say open a web browser and navigate to https://jiwards.jiwa.com.au and it be able to reach the locally running IIS instance for the web client.

This is not an essential configuration, but is sometimes useful.

Where this may be essential is if you are running the API self hosted service on the VM, have configured for HTTPS and wish to use the custom domain FQDN.

Secure the Remote Desktop Server

When the VM for Remote Desktop Services was provisioned, port 3389 was open and used and we used the RDP protocol to connect to it to perform the installation and configuration tasks.

Now that the Remote Desktop Gateway is configured, we only need to leave port 443 open (HTTPS) and port 80 (HTTP).  The RemoteApp, Webclient and HTML5 client all require port 443 (HTTPS), and we also need port 80 open for the regular 3 monthly certificate renewal automatically performed by the win-acme client.

The rule in the Azure firewall for port 3389 to be open should be removed.

App Registration for Email through Office 365 (Microsoft Graph API)

Emailing from within Jiwa is a common requirement, and if the customer has Office 365 then you should use our Microsoft Graph API plugin for email transport - and this requires an App registration in the Azure Active Directory.

See the article Email - Configuration Microsoft Graph REST API for guidance on how to set this up.

Point to Site VPN

MS Azure Data Backups

Add on extra $$ a month to backup the VM if deemed necessary – we generally don’t as it’s just Windows Server 2019 and Jiwa – nothing that can’t rapidly be rebuiltIf users wish to access resources - such as the SQL database or RDS VM - from their local environment (perhaps for Excel queries or BI tooling), you will need to configure a point to site VPN connection in Azure, as resources should only be accessible from within the same Virtual Network.

Exposing the resources outside the virtual network via whitelisting of IP addresses in the Firewall rules is not recommended.

Backups and Data Security

Virtual Machine

The Azure Backup service can be used to automatically backup virtual machines if desired.  The Jiwa application stores only ephemeral data on the VM, so if the VM is destroyed no data is lost - the database contains all the data.

However, it can save time to be able to restore a VM to a previous known working state if it is destroyed - see the official Microsoft documentation on how to configure virtual machine backups if desired.

Also, availability sets can be configured to provide a redundant failover if the VM is destroyed. See the Azure documentation on Availability options for Azure Virtual Machines.

Database

Azure SQL servers never need to be backed up, as this is already done for you.  You may wish, however to opt-in to geo-redundant storage to replicate a copy of the database(s) to other Azure datacenter(s) in case of natural disaster or other catastrophe.

By default, the Azure SQL servers are replicated in real-time to 3 different failover nodes in different fault zones in the datacenter, and should one of those machines, or one of the components, fail - then the requests are automatically redirected to one of the failover machines and a new machine provisioned automatically to replace the failed machine.  If you choose geo-redundant storage, then the same applies to the datacenters replicated to.

You may wish to extend the data retention period for the point-in-time backups beyond the standard 7 to 35 days.  Up to 10 years of data retention of point-in-time restore is available.

You can also manually export the database to a storage blob or even local file system if desired.

MS Azure Calculator

If you haven’t already, you can use the Azure pricing calculator to see the pricing options - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/pricing/calculator

Of particular interest might be the discounts offered for paying up-front for VM’s for 1 or 3 years (41% discount for 1 year, 62% discount for 3 years).What you would need to do to allow us to help you (permissions, et al)

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