Introduction

We’re happy to include you or our mutual customer into the Horus family. This guide is directed at IT-partners servicing our mutual customer, to offer insight in what a Horus installation looks like, which prerequisites are necessary and how to properly prepare for technical implementation of Horus.

What does a Horus installation look like?

It’s important to know that Horus as a platform, is an on-premise Windows application, with a client (Horus Office) that accesses a central database on the same, or another server. For mobile use, Horus data can be accessed on the go, through our app (Falco). Falco is a web/smartphone application that connects to an API. This Horus API is hosted on an IIS web server installed within the same local network as the SQL Server. The API talks directly with the SQL Server and responds to Falco with the expected result. For increased security, a reverse proxy is often installed in front of the server, to prevent Falco users from interacting directly with the server. For servers or workstations running on Linux or MacOS, Windows virtualization is required (Hyper-V, VMware, etc.). If you’re unsure between a VMWare and Hyper-V installation, Hyper-V has proven to provide better performance for Horus Office (Windows client application).

A visual representation:

How is Horus installed & configured?

Horus Software will undertake the necessary steps to roll out a new Horus installation, on a customer’s environment, in collaboration with you, the IT-partner. In order to hit the ground running, well-informed preparations are necessary.

For a comfortable installation, please provide us with a remote session tool (VPN + RDP, Teamviewer or AnyDesk) at the time of installation, using an administrator session. We require an administrator account for the installation process, and at later times, to perform updates and to offer support (eg.: domain\HorusAdmin). Our Horus Support team mostly uses AnyDesk to provide assistance to our customers, we would greatly appreciate it if AnyDesk was installed beforehand and the Horus administrator user is provided to us.

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Important: The administrator credentials provided for the installation, must remain accessible in the future. We use a software called “Horus Installer” to handle not only the installation, but all future updates of the solution. Therefore, one must choose carefully where to install the “Horus Installer”, as it must remain accessible for performing updates later on.

Permanent access to the client’s environment and to this session (Teamviewer Host, continuous RDP, …) is essential if we need to retrieve the accounting data from an old software for the client.

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Requirements

The following is a short summary of recommended specifications for Horus.

Database Server

Remote Desktop Server