This section contains system requirements for deploying a basic topology where all components are installed on one computer.

Processor and memory

• Dual 2.8 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processors
  
  
• 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM or more
  
  

Operating systems

• A 64-bit edition of the Windows Server 2008 operating system
  
  

Software:

• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
  
  
• Visual C++® 2005 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package
  
  
• Windows Installer 3.1 (part of Windows Server 2008)
  
  
• Windows PowerShell™ 1.0 (optional feature of Windows Server 2008)
  
  
• Message Queuing Server and Directory Server integration components of Message Queuing (optional feature of Windows Server 2008). When you enable the Message Queuing feature, you must select the following settings at a minimum:
  
  
  • Under Message Queuing, select Message Queuing Services.
    
    
  • Under Message Queuing Services, select Message Queuing Server and Directory Service Integration.
    
    
• Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 (a role in Windows Server 2008). When you enable this role, use the following settings:
  
  
  • Under Common HTTP, select all options.
    
    
  • Under Application Development, select ASP.Net, .Net Extensibility, ISAPI Extensions, and ISAPI Filters.
    
    
  • Under Health and Diagnostics, select HTTP logging and Request monitor.
    
    
  • Under Security, select everything except Basic Authentication and Digest Authentication.
    
    
  • Under Performance, select Static content compression.
    
    
  • Under Management tools, select all available options.
    
    
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition, SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition, or SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Evaluation Edition, with SP3 (including Database Services, Analysis Services, SQL Server agent, SQL Server engine, Integration Services, Reporting Services, and Workstation components)
  
  
• Windows Update Agent 3.0 (part of Microsoft Windows Server 2008)
  
  
• Microsoft XML Core Services (MSXML) 6.0 (part of Windows Server 2008)
  
  
• Bitsadmin 2.0 or later (optional requirement only for deployments in which Stirling connects to the Internet through a proxy)
  
  
• Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2. At the time of this release of Stirling, the R2 version of Operations Manager is Beta software and is subject to an expiration date. Also, the Operations Manager 2007 server name must be fewer than 15 characters, or Stirling will not be able to connect to the Distribution, Assessment, and Collection (DAC) servers, and deployment will fail. Operations Manager 2007 R2 does not support server names that are more than 14 characters in length.
  
  

Hard disk:

• 20 GB or more
  
  

This section contains system requirements for deploying a basic topology with a remote database. When you use this topology, you install Stirling components on two computers.

Requirements for the Stirling server role

Requirements for the SQL Server database server

This section contains system requirements for deploying an advanced topology. When you use this topology, you install Stirling components on one or more computers. Before installing multiple server roles on one computer, ensure that the computer meets the minimum system requirements for all roles you want to install.

Requirements for the database servers

Requirements for the Stirling server role

Requirements for the reporting server role

Requirements for the DAC server role

Requirements for the Network Policy Server (NPS) server role

Requirements for the Stirling console

Processor and memory:

• 1 GHz or faster processor
  
  
• 250 MB of RAM or more
  
  

Operating systems:

• Windows 7 operating system
  
  
• 64-bit or 32-bit editions of Windows Server 2008 Standard
  
  
• 64-bit or 32-bit editions of Windows Vista Business
  
  
• 64-bit or 32-bit editions of Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition with SP2
  
  
• Windows XP Professional with SP2
  
  
• Windows XP Professional x86 Edition with SP3
  
  

Software:

• Windows Installer 3.1
  
  
• Windows Update Agent 3.0
  
  
• Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package
  
  
• MSXML 6.0
  
  
• The Task Scheduler process must also be running on the client computer.
  
  

Hard disk:

• 1 GB or more
  
  

For this release of Stirling, you need to download the self-extracting archive that contains the Stirling software. After you download the archive, you need to expand it into a temporary folder by using the following command:

<archive filename> /x:<extraction folder>

where archive filename is the name of the Stirling self-extracting archive you downloaded and extraction folder is the path to the location of the temporary folder in which you want to extract the archive. For example:

ForefrontCodeNameStirlingBeta2_en-us.exe /x: Temp

You cannot install Stirling server roles from a network drive. Therefore, you must copy the files to a local drive on each computer on which you are going to install a server role.

For large deployments of 1,000 to 50,000 client computers, you need to meet the minimum requirements listed in this section as well as meeting the minimum system requirements above.

Each computer running the DAC server role must have the following:

• CPU—Minimum of 8 cores.
  
  
• Memory—Minimum of 16 GB.
  
  
• Disk—Redundant array of independent disks (RAID) 10 composed of 10,000 revolutions per minute (RPM) small computer system interface (SCSI) drives for a total of 200 GB. These will be used for the Operations Manager Health service and Config service stores.
  
  
• Network—Gigabit preferred.
  
  

In a basic topology with a remote database, the computer running the Stirling and Operations Manager databases must meet the following system requirements, and in an advanced topology where the Stirling and Operations Manager databases are not on the same computer, each database server must meet these minimum requirements:

• CPU—Minimum of 8 cores. Using fewer processors with more cores is preferable to using more physical processors.
  
  
• Memory—Minimum of 16 GB.
  
  
• Disk—RAID 10 composed of 10,000 RPM SCSI drives of at least 500 GB for data and at least 200 GB total for logs.
  
  
• Network—Gigabit preferred.
  
  

In this release of Stirling, you can use the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) administration utility (Bitsadmin) instead of the proxycfg utility in order to configure the proxy for the Stirling server. Bitsadmin 2.0 is part of Windows Server 2008. For more information, see Bitsadmin (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=141116).

The following tables describe the supported combinations of localized software for this prerelease version of Stirling.

For this Beta 2 release, the operating system and the installation of Stirling on the servers may be in English, German, or Japanese; however, the server software prerequisites (including SQL Server and Operations Manager 2007) must be in English.

• You can also run Stirling in a virtual environment by using the Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V™ virtualization feature. Using the standalone Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 is not supported.
  
  
• In all cases where the minimum system requirement for Stirling is less than the minimum required by components on which Stirling depends, you must use at least the greater of the two requirements.
  
  
• If you intend to use Network Access Protection (NAP) settings in policies you distribute to client computers, those computers must meet the minimum requirements for NAP and Stirling. In addition, for this release of Stirling, do not install NAP and the Stirling server components on the same computer.
  
  
• Do not change the domain in which you intend to install the Stirling server role after you have installed the prerequisites. Doing so will cause Setup to fail. If you need to change the domain of the Stirling server, you must first reinstall the prerequisites into the same domain.
  
  
• The Active Directory domain name and the Operations Manager management group name must not be the same. These two names are used as discovery sources in Stirling and must be unique.
  
  
• Installing Stirling server components on a domain controller is not supported.
  
  
• The domain controller must be running on Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008.
  
  
• If you are using a German domain controller, you need to add a new security group called, "Domain Computers" and then make the "Domänencomputer" group a member of the "Domain Computers" group.
  
  
• Using a clustered installation of SQL Server for Stirling server components is not supported.
  
  
• Installing the server or client components of Stirling within Microsoft Virtual Server is not supported. Microsoft distributes preinstalled virtual machines for evaluation use.
  
  
• If Setup only discovers Visual C++ 2008, installation will fail. You must use the Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package.
  
  
• Message Queuing is an optional feature of Windows Server 2008; however, the Message Queuing Server and Directory Server Integration components of Message Queuing are required by Stirling.
  
  
• IIS 7.0 is an optional component of Windows Server 2008; however, it is required by both the Stirling server role and the DAC role.
  
  
• You cannot enable the Terminal Services role on the Stirling server.
  
  
• If the prerequisite verification for Operations Manager fails during Setup because the current system does not meet the minimum system requirements, the More dialog box erroneously states that you must install Operations Manager 2007 SDK SP2. No such version exists. Instead, you must use Operations Manager 2007 R2 as described in these system requirements.
  
  
• If the firewall Service is stopped or disabled during Stirling server Setup, then exceptions for the Stirling service will not be added to the firewall. If this occurs, you need to manually add ffsService.exe to the firewall exceptions so that clients such as Stirling console can connect to the Server.
  
  

The following table provides links to fully licensed versions (and trial versions, where available) of some of the prerequisites you need for Stirling and other Forefront security products. For complete information about system requirements for other Forefront products, see the product documentation.

Other Resources