Advantage CSP Installation Guide

System requirements

 

Before you install Advantage CSP, you have to make sure that your system complies with the following requirements:


Components


Requirements


Server-side requirements

  • Microsoft® .NET Framework 4.8 on supported Windows versions. NOTE: To deploy your Advantage CSP project to Microsoft Azure, you must first create and develop your project locally.
  •  Advantage CSP supports both 32 bit and 64 bit Windows operation systems on x86 processor architecture.

  • Internet Information Services 10+

  • NOTE: To deploy your Advantage CSP projects to IIS, you must configure IIS to use Integrated application pool mode.


Supported browsers for administration and content editing

The latest two officially supported versions of the following browsers:

  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Edge
  • Webkit (Safari)

JavaScript must be enabled on all browsers.


 For development

All Microsoft® Visual Studio editions for versions 2017, 2019, and 2022. You have to install the following:

  • ASP.NET and web development workload
  •  .NET Framework 4.8 SDK component.
  •  .NET Framework 4.8 targeting pack component.


 

Environment:

  • .NET v4.8 or higher (IIS v10 or higher) for Advantage CSP application
  • Microsoft SQL (Azure, 2019 or higher) for Advantage CSP database

 

Serverless: (recommended)

 

 

 

Advantage CSP Community:

  • App Service Standard Plan S1 or higher for Advantage CSP application
  • Azure SQL Standard Tier (S0 10DTUs/250GB or higher) for Advantage CSP database

 

Advantage CSP Enterprise:

  • App Service Premium Plan P1V3 or higher) for Advantage CSP application
  •  Azure SQL Premium Tier (P1 125DTUs/500GB-1TB or higher) for Advantage CSP database

 

High availability enterprise deployment using App Service Environment

 

Server-based (VM):

Network Virtual Appliances (NVAs) Configurations

 

Highly Available Network Virtual Appliances (NVAs)

The following architectures describe the resources and configuration necessary for highly available NVAs:

Solution Benefits Considerations
Azure Load Balancer Supports active/active, active/standby and scale-out NVAs. Very good convergence time The NVA needs to provide a port for the health probes, especially for active/standby deployments. Flows to/from Internet require SNAT for symmetry
Azure Route Server The NVA needs to support BGP. Supports active/active, active/standby and scale-out NVAs. Traffic symmetry requires SNAT
Gateway Load Balancer Traffic symmetry guaranteed without SNAT. NVAs can be shared across tenants. Very good convergence time. Supports active/active, active/standby and scale-out NVAs. Supports flows to/from the Internet, no East-West flows
Changing PIP/UDR No special feature is required by the NVA. Guarantees symmetric traffic Only for active/passive designs. High convergence time of 1-2 minutes


 

 

Build Solutions For High Availability Using Availability Zones:

 

 

Advantage CSP Community:

 

  • F2s v2 (or min 2 vCPU, 4GB RAM, 60GB drive) Windows 2019 or later with IIS v10 role or higher and .NET v4.8 or higher for Advantage CSP application
  •  D2s v5 (or min 2 vCPU, 8GB RAM, 60GB drive) SQL Server 2019 Web Edition or higher on Windows 2019or later for Advantage CSP database

 

Advantage CSP Enterprise:

  • F4s v2 (or min 4 vCPU, 8GB, 60GB drive) Windows 2019 (or later) with IIS v10 role (or higher) and .NET v4.8 (or higher) for Advantage CSP application
  •  D4s v5 (or min 4 vCPU, 16GB, 60GB drive) SQL Server 2019 Web Edition (or later) on Windows 2019 (or later) for Advantage CSP database\
  •  Azure pricing depend on CNO type and level of agreement with Microsoft e.g., Commercial (MCA, Indirect, CSP) or EDU, GOV, NGO, etc. Also, setup can vary depending on requirements for availability, scalability, security, and resiliency. Please refer to Azure Pricing Calculator | Microsoft Azure.

 

 

Deployment

:
  • Visual Studio IDE
  •  Azure DevOps Pipelines through Azure Hosted or Dedicated VM agent.
  •  Once you have downloaded the advantagecsp.vsix (above) you will need to close visual studio and “double- click” the file.

 

This will install the following:

  • Advantage CSP Project – Main project container
  • Advantage BusinessObject – Object used to create and store data.
  • Advantage SiteSettings BusinessObject – Object used to manager custom “site wide” data.
  • Advantage Module – Display module used on the frontend.
  • Advantage Rewrite Module – Display module used on the front end and can be easily bound to a BusinessObject.
  • Advantage Tool – Administrative user control used to manage the data of a BusinessObject.
  • Advantage Site Settings Tool – Administrative user control used to manage the data of a Site Settings BusinessObject

 

First Time Setup

  • Install -> Stop all instances of Visual studio and double-click to install the .vsix.
  • Create Project -> Open Visual Studio -> Create a new project -> Select "AdvantageCSP Project" type.
  • Configure Database -> Open the web.config and set the connection string for your database server. Make sure the user specified has privileges to create a new database.
  • Server -> Name or IP address of database server
  • Database -> Name of the database that will be created for this project (will automatically be created on initialization.
  • User -> SQL Server user ID
  • Password -> SQL Server password
  • On startup you will land on the default "Welcome to Advantage CSP" page. Navigate to the
  • Advantage Action Item Control – Administrative control to allow custom functionality.Navigate to the
    /advantagecsp/initializecsp to begin setup of the project.



 

 

Our Shared Hosting (we manage):

  • Fully managed solution, one Point of Contact, local development, support and infrastructure.
  • Features state of art web application firewall (WAF) with complimentary SSL certificate and custom rules
  • Hosting price is embedded with the licensing. Please refer to Advantage CSP Pricing | Advantage CSP.

 

Our Dedicated Hosting (In addition to the above):

  • Uptime with 3 9s SLA and active 5m monitoring and notification.
  •  Features service isolation (process, memory, bandwidth, and storage)
  • Provides further custom setup for load balancing, high availability, redundancy,
  • Uptime with 4 9s SLA and active 1m monitoring and escalation.

Starter Edition is available on the Shared Hosting or can be run under the Community Edition for development and testing purposes. Advantage CSP dedicated hosting for Enterprise Editions will be based on the Azure commercial rates and based on the recommended instance configuration mentioned above. Additional cost (a la cart) for custom setup of other services for availability, scalability, security, and resiliency based on the requirements and solutions that are not included in the shared hosting.

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