HealthCast

Communications

Communications Settings

Compatibility (All XA Client versions)

By default, there are two communications ports utilized by the ExactAccess Server.

Listening Port

Port 15000 is used for the compatibility communications port. This facilitates communication and support of XA client versions prior to 4.5.650. For new installations, or installations where XA client version 4.5.650 or higher is deployed, this port can be disabled (recommended) if the clients have been configured to use the Indy protocol.

Advanced (XA client versions 4.8.3 and above)

Listening Port

Port 15001 is used as the port for ExactAccess clients that dynamic protocol negotiations. If this port is updated on the server, a corresponding update must be made to the client workstations using this server.

Communications Thread Pool Limit

This protocol allows for selecting the thread cache limit for connections to help improve performance. The default 200 is sufficient for most installations, but can be configured as needed in high load environments, or may be lowered for low load environments. The number specified here means that the server will (pre)allocate this number of threads in the server process to handle incoming requests.

Local Server Management Port

This is the port bound to only the local address (127.0.0.1 or ::1) that the ExactAccess Server Monitor tool will use to query server status of the service.

Connection Hash Class

The available options are MD5 and WHIRLPOOL.

MD5 is a lightweight hash algorithm that generates 128 bit hashes, but is only recommended if the client workstations connecting to the system are slow (less than 2GHz).

WHIRLPOOL is a hash algorithm that generates 512 bit hashes. The larger number of bits means it is more secure, but it also requires slightly more CPU cycles to generate. WHIRLPOOL is the recommended choice if your workstations are 2GHz or better.

Database

Database Settings

Database Class

The only available database provider for this version of ExactAccess server services is FireDAC. It provides connectivity to Microsoft SQL Server using Microsoft Native Drivers or Microsoft SQL ODBC drivers.

Connection Timeout

This indicates how long the drivers will wait for a successful connection to a SQL server. If this ExactAccess installation will be using service database fail-over connection strings (multiple database connection strings are configured for the service), this number should be set as low as possible to improve fail-over responsiveness to secondary connections. For high availability configurations (SQL clustering, Active Group Listener configurations), this number should be set high enough for the drivers to allow clustering fail-over logic to promote a SQL server to the active state when the primary server has failed and not immediately return a connection failure to the service.

Command Timeout

This indicates how long any single transaction made by the service can take to complete. For highly stressed SQL servers, this number should be configured to allow for the appropriate workload to be completed even if the server is at maximum capacity. If there is excess capacity on the server, all service operations are expected to take less than 10 seconds to complete for normal operations.

Database Encryption Class

For those server services that support updated database encryption, choose an encryption method to use to protect the data. During upgrades, choose the LEGACY or PROX_LEGACY option. After upgrade has been completed for all servers, choose a method other than LEGACY or PROX_LEGACY. AES192 is recommended, but any of the other options are valid. Consult your security officer for recommendations for your organization.

Servers

This lists the currently configured connection string for each configured SQL server in the organization. The ExactAccess server services support as many fail-over connection strings as desired. The first connection string entered in this list will be considered the primary server. The remaining servers listed will not be utilized unless the primary server Connection Timeout is reached and the server is deemed off-line. In primary server fail conditions, each of the servers will be attempted in the order in which they are entered in this list until a connection is made or all servers have been attempted and an error is returned to the client.

Adding a new connection

Click the plus () button to bring up the Data Link Properties (FireDAC) window

Connections

Select a driver

Microsoft provides several connectivity drivers for SQL server. You may choose SQL server as the driver (which is available by default on Windows 2012 R2 and above) - or optionally, install one of the later Microsoft SQL Server Native Drivers which will provide other connectivity options (such as ODBC)

Select a server (by using the browsing service) or manually enter a SQL server database name and instance.

If this SQL server is part of the High Availability Group configuration (available in SQL server 2012 and above), check the box for Server is Availability Group Listener. This will notify the Microsoft Driver to expect multiple IP addresses from multiple SQL servers configured in this group/cluster so that the driver can provide appropriate fail-over if the primary node fails.

Authentication Type

If the service has been configured to run under a service account, that service account must have been granted DB Owner permissions for the service database (SSO, Prox, Deploy, Audit) when choosing to use Windows NT Integrated Security. In this case, a password does not need to be supplied in this configuration, as the security credentials are configured on the service using MMC services management tools provided by Windows.

If you choose to use SQL server authentication, then pick the "Use a specific user name and password" that has been configured in SQL server as the DB owner of the service database (SSO, Prox, Deploy, Audit). This username and password will become part of the connection string and will be stored encrypted in the registry.

Enter a database name

Manually type if the name for the database associated with this service, or click the drop down to show a list of available databases to connect to.

Other

Directory Service Options

Access Class

Using the drop down, select the type of LDAP connection that the ExactAccess server will use to provide directory service services.

LDAP Provider — the basic LDAP provider used to request information from the domain controllers. This provider will display UNIVERSAL groups. LDAP is intended to reduce the network bandwidth required for directory communications. LDAP does not allow anonymous connections, therefore, the ExactAccess server must be configured to run under a domain account that has permissions to read the directory.

LDAP Global Catalog Provider — similar to the LDAP provider (it has the same limitations); this provider uses a Global Catalog Server for user and role lookups. For very large organizations with multiple domains within a forest, a global catalog is used as a cached data store of all domain "trees" within the "forest" of an Active Directory. It provides improved performance over the LDAP Provide when the domains are across WAN links. This makes it the ideal choice for multi-facility integration where each site maintains their own domain that is part of the same forest spanning multiple locations. All domains should have two way trusts and replicate their user and role information into the global catalog so that each domain data set is available on every global catalog server in the forest. If a user lookup in the global catalog fails, a fallback lookup using standard LDAP will be performed against the user account domain server(s). Note that the global catalog will only contain UNIVERSAL group membership information for accounts that are not part of the domain the GC is hosted on. This means that only UNIVERSAL groups may be used when assigning access permissions with this multi-site configuration.

Enable Auto-Add Users function

Select the Auto-Add Users radio button only on the primary server. For secondary server configuration, select Auto-Rename Users. The Auto-Rename Users option keeps the domain data cache synchronized with updates to Active Directory. This operation is also performed on the primary server when selecting the Auto-Add Users option.

Auto-(Add/Rename) Interval (Minutes)

Adjust the interval that the cache is synchronized on the server. The interval specified here indicates how long to wait between the synchronization operations (from the end of one, to the beginning of the next) To reduce network traffic, and load on the Directory Controller servers, increase this value to an appropriate interval. Keep in mind that an auto-add operation will be somewhere after this interval at a minimum before the user will be available in the ExactAccess database and be eligible for searching/finding with the XA HelpDesk tool.

Domain Controller Lookup (Seconds)

Occasionally, domain controllers need to be rebooted. When this happens, ExactAccess is designed to detect this based on how often it should validate the DC.

Domain Controller Check Count

The option for Lookup is how often to validate the current server to determine its operational state, and the Check Count is how many attempts the server will perform before it assumes the server is down (in the event an error is received during a user request/operation) The default values typically do not need to be changed.

Exclude DC(s) from the round robin processing

To exclude one or more DCs from being utilized,

Example:

Software\HealthCast\ExactAccess\XADSNT\Servers\BOISETESTAD

ExcludedDCs=DC01,DC02

Query Domain Controller List

nltest /dclist:<DomainName>

Disable Internal Directory Service Cache

The following registry key/value can be used to disable cache:

Configure Directory Service

Once the configuration class has been chosen, the server must be configured with the domains that will be SSO enabled. The configure directory service button is used during initial configuration of the server to select the domain or domains that will be linked to the ExactAccess server.

When you have selected to add a domain to the window on the right, double click that domain to select it as the primary domain.

The Domain Processing threads value is used to determine the number of work threads available for domain communications. It is recommended that 2 threads be allocated per domain added to the list of selected domains up to the processing core count available on the server. If fewer domains are selected than half the work threads, the remaining threads are simply not used, and do not impact system performance.

After selecting the appropriate domains and pressing the OK button, the system will perform a SID lookup. The SID is a security ID associated with the domain, and is a base for all user and role accounts to provide a unique id to each object. XA will cache the domain SID to improve performance for certain operations.

Once the configuration of the domains is complete, click the OK button to commit the configuration.

The service must now be restarted. Using the Service Control Manager (SCM) Stop (if it was previously running) and (Re)Start the HCI ExactAccess Server service.

Nested Groups

The LDAP and LDAP+GC (global catalog) Providers allow ExactAccess to support nested group membership for user access control. This feature requires that the Active Directory version be Windows 2003 SP2 or higher. If you would like to support nested groups in your environment, ensure the Support Nested Groups for access control checks is checked.

User Name Display Format

This corresponds to how to parse and display user names as provided by the directory service. It is recommended that the Use Given Name (First name) and SN (Last name) fields option be chosen. This setting affects the privacy shield display name settings.

The administrative role field will become editable once all other configuration has been completed. Enter the domain/role name for the primary administrative group from active directory.