SilhouetteCentral Web Application Installation

The following steps install the SilhouetteCentral web application on IIS.

Software Prerequisite Installation

In order to run SilhouetteCentral, Microsoft .NET 4.5.2 (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=42642) must be installed on the server in addition to IIS. If not already installed, .NET can be downloaded from the internet using the link provided. In some circumstances a reboot of the server may be required during installation.

Extract SilhouetteCentral

Unzip the SilhouetteCentral zip file into a sub directory within the main wwwroot folder used by IIS. The name of this folder becomes part of the URL used to access SilhouetteCentral.

For example, if IIS is installed within the C:\inetpub\wwwroot folder and you want the SilhouetteCentral website to be accessible via http://name-of-your-server/Silhouette, you would extract the zip file into a subdirectory called C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Silhouette.

Configure IIS

Once the SilhouetteCentral software has been placed in the wwwroot folder IIS must be configured to treat this folder as a web application. This can be configured in a number of ways including:

Via IIS Manager

1. Open IIS Manager.
2. Create a new application pool for use by SilhouetteCentral:
   1. In the Connections pane, right-click the Application Pools node.
   2. Select Add Application Pool.
   3. Give the pool a unique name (we recommend the same name as the directory extracted previously).
   4. Select .NET CLR Version v4.0.30319 and the Managed Pipeline mode as Integrated.
   5. Click OK.
   6. Right-click on the new Application Pool in the list and select Advanced Settings...
   7. Set the Start Mode property to AlwaysRunning.
   8. Click OK.
3. Convert the directory into an application
   1. In the Connections pane, expand the Sites node and then the node representing your website (Default Web Site by default).
   2. Find the node representing the folder you created in step 1.
   3. Right-click the folder, and click Convert To Application.
   4. Click Select, and choose the application pool you created above.
   5. Click OK.
   6. Right-click the folder again (which is now an application) and select Manage Application > Advanced Settings...
   7. Set the Preload Enabled property to True.
   8. Click OK.

Via Windows Powershell

If installing on a Windows 2008 R2 or later server creation of the Silhouette application pool and web application may also be scripted via a powershell command prompt:

Import-Module WebAdministration

New-WebAppPool –Name Silhouette

Set-ItemProperty –path IIS:\AppPools\Silhouette –name "managedRuntimeVersion" –value "v4.0"

Set-ItemProperty –path IIS:\AppPools\Silhouette –name "startMode" –value "AlwaysRunning"

New-WebApplication –Name Silhouette –Site "Default Web Site" –PhysicalPath c:\inetpub\wwwroot\Silhouette –ApplicationPool Silhouette

Set-ItemProperty -path "IIS:\Sites\Default Web Site" -name "preloadEnabled" -value "True"

File System Permissions

The user account used by the application pool created in the previous section (typically IIS AppPool\Silhouette) requires read permission to all files within the folder you extracted SilhouetteCentral to. Note that this user is automatically a member of the local IIS_IUSRS group, which by default has read access to all web applications hosted in the wwwroot folder.

The application pool user account also requires the following subdirectory specific permissions

If SilhouetteConnect as part of your system, then the service account used to run the SQL Server synchronization instance will need to permission to access the folder where SilhouetteConnect databases are stored during the synchronization process (this folder may not exist until after the website has been started). For our default install where the instance name is Silhouette, the user account will be "NT SERVICE\MSSQL$SILHOUETTE".