ROOMZ Server On-Premise v2

Owned by Christoph Witzemann
Last updated: Jul 18, 2024 by Christoph Witzemann
6 min read

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Context

This page describes the checklist and the technical pre-requisites for the installation of the ROOMZ On-Premise v2.

The installation cannot be started if one of the following entries is missing.

Checklist

Pre-requisites

Server Software

Operating System

  • Windows Server 2022 Containerย (Windows Server 2016 and 2019 are no longer supported)

  • Version 21h2 or higher

  • OS Build: latest

  • ROOMZ must run on a standalone server

(current version can be found using the command 'winver'. Windows Update could be necessary for reaching the minimal patch version)

VMware Tools >= 11.0.6

There is a known issue with VMware Tools lower than the version 11.0.6 and the docker networks. If VMware tools is installed on the server, please ensure its version is 11.0.6 or higher.

Docker engine

Docker engine must be installed and running. If Docker engine is not installed, please follow those instructions:Prepare Windows operating system containers

Docker compose

Docker compose must be installed. If Docker compose is not installed, please follow those instructions: Install Compose standalone

Make sure to have the variable for docker in the system-enviroment variable paths:

Docker and Antivirus

The antivirus and firewall must be configured in order to exclude Docker. Please follow those instructions.

The following exclusions should be set at least:

Server Hardware

Recommendation from Microsoft: Windows container requirements

Recommendation from ROOMZ:

Physical or Virtual Machine (VM) with:

  • Processor : 2.5 Ghz (Dual Core)

  • RAM : 8 GB (16 GB recommended)

  • Storage : 50 GB

DNS Entries + certificates

5 DNS Entries must be added to the internal DNS Server and must redirect to the On-Premise Server

For this 1st entry, ROOMZ will generate the certificate during the installation :

  • api.roomz.example.com

For those 4 entries, the organization must create the certificates in PEM Formatย  (base64):

(The self signed certificate can use a wildcard. Thus, only one certificate could be issued for all the entries. Eg: "*.roomz.example.com")

  • portal.roomz.example.com

  • portal-api.roomz.example.com

  • login.roomz.example.com

  • viewer.roomz.example.com ย 

Wi-Fi credentials

The ROOMZ Devices will communicate with the ROOMZ Server On-Premise using the existing Wi-Fi environment. The following authentication are supported:

  • Open

  • WPA2 - Personal (PSK)

  • WPA2 - Enterpriseย 

    • EAP-TLS (Certificates)

    • PEAPv0 / EAP- MSCHAPv2 (Username - Password)

Please make sure you know the authentication and the credentials of your Wi-Fi.

SMTP connection

User invitations and technical notifications are sent per email. A SMTP connection is mandatory for those 2 scenarios.

Please make sure you know the SMTP credentials to use.

Internet connection and whitelisting

Internet access is only mandatory during the installation process or during the update process. When ROOMZ Server is running, all the connection to Internet can be closed.

Internet will be used for downloading the ROOMZ Docker images for the ROOMZ Docker Registry.

Should you have an outgoing DNS Whitelisting, please ensure the following entries are present:

ROOMZ Registry

  • roomz.azurecr.io

  • *.blob.core.windows.net

Docker download:

Please make sure there is an Internet Access.

Extra

Docker behind a corporate proxy

To configure the Docker client behind a proxy, you have to configure the Docker service to use your proxy.

Certificates

Often the customer certificate is provided as PFX/P12 but NGINX doesn't support it. We have to convert the format PFX/P12 to a format more generic which is called PEM. The command line tool OpenSSL provide an easy way to explode the certificate in 2 parts, the certificate(only) and the key of the certificate which is used to make the cryptographic operations.

This is NOT MANDATORY to install the OpenSSL command line on the server, you can install it anywhere, execute the commands and move the certificate files(*.crt, *.key) to the server.

To extract the certificate and its parents, execute the following command in your terminal, this file will contain information of your server and organization.

openssl pkcs12 -in <pfx-file-path> -nokeys -out cert.crt -clcerts -chain

To extract the private key, execute the following command in your terminal, this file will contain the cryptographic key to make the SSL handshake between the server and the clients.

openssl pkcs12 -in <pfx-file-path> -nocerts -out cert.key -nodes

Once the files(*.crt, .key) moved to the server, in the ROOMZ certificate folder(e.g. C:\ROOMZ\Certificates), replace each files by your files(*.crt, *.key).

Which files should be replaced to use my SSL certificate

All ROOMZ certificates are in the folder ROOMZ\Certificates, which is often C:\ROOMZ\Certificates.

By default, you should replace the files login-cert.crt, login-cert.key, portal-cert.crt, portal-cert.key, portal-api-cert.crt, portal-api-cert.key, viewer-cert.crt, viewer-cert.key and set your certificate password in the files login-cert.pass, portal-cert.pass, portal-api-cert.pass, viewer-cert.pass by your certificate files(*.crt, *.key) extracted using OpenSSL.

Windows SQL Authentication

ROOMZ On-Premise uses a SQL Database, which will be installed during the setup.

If you wish to use the Windows Authentication, you have to follow those steps in your domain controller. The steps will create a file containing metadata of the provided gMSA name as the computer account for the container. Copy the generated file into the host folderย C:\ProgramData\Docker\CredentialSpecs and the new instruction must be added in the docker-compose.yml file in the container section which will use the Windows Authentication (often SQL).

SQL Database sizeย 

The SQL Database will grow from approximately 20MB every year by workspace.

We suggest a database size of 5GB on premise.

SMTP Server

ROOMZ needs an access to your SMTP server to send invitation for the new users created in the portal. To test the SMTP configuration before adding it into the .env file on your server, you can test the settings using the following command.

docker run -it --rm roomz.azurecr.io/roomz/testsmtp:ltsc2022 <host> <port> <sender> <recipient> <useSsl> [<username> <password>]

To have more information about the arguments, type the following command without arguments passed to the tester.

docker run -it --rm roomz.azurecr.io/roomz/testsmtp:ltsc2022

Example

docker run -it --rm roomz.azurecr.io/roomz/testsmtp:ltsc2022 smtp.domain.com 547 sender@domain.com recipient@domain.com false myUserName myPassword

Web browser compatibilityย 

To ensure best performance of ROOMZ, please make sure to always have the latest version of your web browser installed on the machine accessing to the portal

ROOMZ is compatible with the following browsers:ย 

  • Chrome

  • Firefox

  • Edge Chromium

Offline installation

Download

Docker

Please follow the instructions from the online selection on top.

ROOMZ

Download the ROOMZ archive containing the images from a computer with an internet access, copy the archive on your server, unzip the archive on your server and import the images by executing the following commands where the images are.

The ROOMZ Archive is not available to download on the portal and can only be provided by ROOMZ

Install

An instance of SQL Express is included in the container. The next steps assume that you are using this default instance and not your own SQL serverย 

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It's recommended to use Powershell as terminal for the following instructions.

On your offline server, please follow the instructions.

  1. Configure your anti-virus software, by following the Docker instructions and exclude the processes dockerd.exe, dotnet.exe, erl.exe and node.exe too.

  2. Copy the archive into the folder C:\ROOMZ.

  3. Unzip the archive and import the images by executing the following commands where the images are.

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  4. We assume that ALL next commands will be executed in the working directory C:\ROOMZ.

  5. ROOMZ needs an SMTP server to send the invitations to the new users created in the portal, you can use our small tool dockerized to test your credentials before adding them in the configuration file.

  6. Update the file .env by updating the placeholders { } with your credentials (username, password, etc.) and remove the ones you don't use.

  7. To start the ROOMZ environment for the first time, type the command.

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  8. ROOMZ is Live !

Troubleshooting

By default, docker is not configured to limit the log files created by the running container, you have to configure it to limit the files created and their sizes.

For the other potential issues, please check the docker troubleshooting page:ย https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-windows/troubleshoot/

Licenses

Backup

To back up the important data, please save the folder on C:\ROOMZ all required data are in this folder. If you would like to have a fast backup, we would recommand to use a full backup via snapshot on the virtual machine

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