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Installation and upgrades

Points to note before you upgrade

  1. We recommend you provide our Catalog curation team with your current AppClarity database. This enables us to ensure your catalog entries are curated to minimize the disruption from having to manually relink these items post-upgrade.

  2. Ensure you install the Catalog first and wait for its background curation process to complete before you install AppClarity. Typically, this takes between 45 minutes to an hour an a half depending on the amount of data it downloads. You can monitor the status of curation process by looking C:\ProgramData\1E\AppClarity\CatalogSynchronization (when the folders are empty, the curation is complete) or by searching the logs (C:\ProgramData\1E\AppClarity\AppClarity.Catalog.UpdateService.log) for a Curation Done entry.

  3. During the upgrade, the AppClarity 5.2 upgrade script attempts to convert all your existing catalog entries to the new schema, however you may need to manually link those products that could not be automatically matched with the new catalog.
  4. After the upgrade, any entitlements that cannot be matched with the new catalog schema are locked – they can be viewed but cannot be updated and will not be used for compliance. To unlock these entitlements, you must link them to a catalog product. We can provide you with scripts to identify these entitlements.

Before running the AppClarity installer you should ensure that 1E Catalog and ActiveEfficiency is already installed or upgraded – it is a requirement for installing AppClarity as it plays an key role in providing these features:

Then, take some time to consider which installation scenario best suits you and provision the servers to support it following our prerequisites. Once the initial configuration is done, you can install AppClarity using the installation wizard or run it in unattended mode.

For a distributed installation, you must install the components in the following order:

  1. 1E Catalog
  2. Database
  3. Service
  4. Console installer
  5. Software Reclaimer

Sizing and deployment considerations

For optimum performance, we recommend you deploy AppClarity as follows.

  1. Install ActiveEfficiency Server
    • All components of ActiveEfficiency Server are installed on the same server, with its SQL database either local or remote
    • This should include connection to the 1E ActiveEfficiency Cloud
  2. Install AppClarity
    • The 1E AppClarity service, 1E AppClarity Catalog Update Service and Software Reclaimer are typically installed on the same server, with its SQL database either local or remote.
    • The Software Reclaimer is a small executable that can be installed to any location and consumes no resources. It should be copied to the Configuration Manager source content library so that it can be added to a Configuration Manager deployment or task sequence. If using the ActiveEfficiency Agent the ActiveEfficiency Agent installer includes both the ActiveEfficiency Agent and the Software Reclaimer in a single step and in doing so, the Software Reclaimer gets scheduled by the ActiveEfficiency Agent to run twice a day.
    • The ClickOnce Console Installer web site is typically installed on the ActiveEfficiency Server to keep all web sites together and avoid the need for IIS on the AppClarity server.
  3. Install and configure the ActiveEfficiency Scout
    • The ActiveEfficiency Scout installation also includes 1E ActiveEfficiency Synchronization Manager.
    • The Scout is typically installed on the same server as AppClarity so that it reduces the load on the ActiveEfficiency Server which is used continuously during synchronization by the Scout and then AppClarity.
  4. Configure synchronisation schedules using the 1E ActiveEfficiency Synchronization Manager
Evaluation (up to 1,000 computers)Small (up to 5,000 computers)Medium to large (more than 5,000 computers)

For evaluation purposes only, it is feasible to install all components onto a single server.  For example, a Configuration Manager server that has IIS and SQL Server installed, although these can be on separate servers.

If you are evaluating the AppClarity Software Reclaimer, then you will need all components.

If you are evaluating AppClarity Reports, you can use an offline copy of Configuration Manager's site database rather than go through a full Configuration Manager install as only one synchronization is necessary, and optionally install the Software Reclaimer.

  1. Install the AppClarity server, ActiveEfficiency Scout, ActiveEfficiency Server and the ClickOnce Console installer on one server.
  2. Install the AppClarity and ActiveEfficiency databases on a another server.
  3. Install Configuration Manager on a separate server.

  1. Install the AppClarity Server and the ActiveEfficiency Scout on one server.
  2. Install the ActiveEfficiency Server and the ClickOnce Console installer on another server.
  3. Install the AppClarity and ActiveEfficiency databases on a different server.
  4. Install Configuration Manager on a separate server..

Server software usage and VMWare features

Should you need to gather server software and VMWare usage, please contact 1E support for details as additional components must be installed and configured.

Other recommendations

  • Physical or VM – servers can be deployed either on physical or virtual machines. For deployment on a virtual machine, assign the CPU cores at 100% virtual machine reserve

  • Network – if network usage is a concern (for environments with over 25,000 computers) during the synchronization process, we recommend you have a dedicated 1Gbps standard Ethernet connection between the servers (Scout, ActiveEfficiency and AppClarity) where each sever is multi-homed (2 x NICs) so that synchronization traffic between the servers travels over this dedicated network instead of competing for bandwidth
  • SQL Server – we recommend you split your data, log and TempDB files on separate disks. The database RAM recommendations are strictly for the maximum server memory to be allocated to the database instance and an additional 4GB RAM is required for the operating system. SQL Server should always be configured with maximum server memory limit and not left at the default settings to consume unlimited memory.

  • Database growth – assuming there is a total of 100,000 distinct applications across the estate, we expect the database to grow approximately 150MB for the ActiveEfficiency database and 350MB for the AppClarity database for every 1000 devices added to the system. The actual growth will vary depending on number of applications, users, devices and other factors.

  • ActiveEfficiency server configuration – change the startup mode for the 1E ActiveEfficiency service to Automatic (Delayed Start). This ensures that MSMQ is fully loaded when it starts up.

  • AppClarity server configuration –

    • Change the startup mode for the 1E AppClarity service and 1E AppClarity Catalog Update Service to Automatic (Delayed Start). This ensures that MSMQ is fully loaded when it starts up.
    • For environments between 25,000 and 100,000 computers, add the following to the AMP.Coordinator.ServiceHost.config XML file to enable more than the default number of TCP connections (2) between AppClarity and ActiveEfficiency in order to scale up the capacity for the synchronization:
      <system.net><connectionManagement><add address="*" maxconnection="100" /></connectionManagement></system.net>
    • For environments over 100,000 computers, also add the following entry in the AMP.Coordinator.ServiceHost.config XML file to increase the web service response timeout to accommodate the long response time for a particularly large web service request during AppClarity synchronization:
      <add key="ActiveEfficiencyWebServiceTimeOutSecs" value="600"/>