After installing the software

Perform the following procedures after you install the PME software.

(Recommended) Complete the product registration

You can complete the product registration by entering your information in SETTINGS > Registration & Analytics > Registration in Web Applications. Registered systems display a personalized login page with customer and service provider information.

Activate software licenses

The installed software includes a 90-day trial license for all features of the product. You must activate valid purchased software licenses within 90 days, otherwise some software functionality is disabled.

notice

LOSS of communication

● Activate product and component licenses prior to the expiry of the trial license.
● Activate sufficient licenses for the servers and devices in your system.
● Export the existing hierarchy template out of Power Monitoring Expert before importing a new template. The new template can overwrite the existing template, which can permanently remove all information contained in the original.
● Backup or archive any SQL Server database data before adjusting any database memory options.
● Only personnel with advanced knowledge of SQL Server databases should make database parameter changes.

Failure to follow these instructions can result in loss of data.

 

For information on how to activate licenses, see Licensing configuration. For general information on licensing, see Licensing.

(Recommended) Restart the system

Restart (reboot) your system.

Cybersecurity

Review the cybersecurity information. See Cybersecurity for details.

Revert write permissions for the SQL Server service

If you implemented write permissions for the SQL Server service during installation of SQL Server, revert those changes since they are only intended as a temporary measure to ensure a successful installation of SQL Server. See the information related to specifying the Account Name in Installing a new SQL Server.

(Recommended) Set SQL Server memory options

Set the SQL Server memory options. See Setting SQL Server memory options for more information.

Install a security certificate for TLS 1.2

PME uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 for an encrypted, authenticated connection using HTTPS between the server and the Web clients.

A security certificate must be installed on the PME server and must be bound to the Default Web Site, which is used by PME. By default, if no bound certificate is detected, PME is installed with a self-signed certificate.

RECOMMENDATION: We strongly recommend that you replace the self-signed certificate with an authority issued certificate.

NOTE: TLS 1.3 is enabled by default in Windows 11 Professional/Enterprise and Windows Server 2022 Standard operating systems. If PME is installed on any of these operating systems, then PME web applications will not work on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. TLS 1.3 should be disabled for PME web applications to work on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. For information on how to disable TLS 1.3, see Disabling TLS 1.3. Windows might update the TLS protocol version support for the operating systems. For more details, see TLS protocol version support.

For information on how to install and bind a certificate, see Installing and binding a Server Certificate.

For information on how to configure PME after installing and binding a certificate, see Configure PME for server certificates.

For information on how to enable HTTP connections for PME, see Enabling HTTP connections for PME.

Windows Integrated Authentication for SQL Server

If you installed PME to use Windows Integrated Authentication, then you need to manually add the Windows accounts for Engineering tool users to the SQL database server. This is needed for using the tools on the PME server or on Engineering clients. Engineering tools include applications such as Vista, Designer, Management Console, and Management Console tools.

We recommend that you:

  • Create a Window group for PME Engineering Client users.
  • Add the Windows group to PME as a User. See Adding a Windows group for details.
  • Add the Windows group to the SQL database server with db_owner role for the PME databases. (See work flow steps below)
  • Add all users who need to access to Engineering client applications to the Windows group. All members of this Windows group now have the required permissions to access PME and the database through the Engineering Client applications.
  • Remove the Windows account for the install user from the SQL database logins. See Before Installing the software for more information on this account.

To add a Windows group to the SQL database server,

  1. Start Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio on the database server.
  2. Connect with an account with sysadmin privileges.
  3. Navigate to Security > Logins, right-click Logins, and select New Login from the context menu. This opens the Login - New window.
  4. In Login - New, select Windows authentication, click Search, and locate the Windows group you want to add.
  5. In the Select a page pane on the left, select User Mapping.
  6. In User Mapping, select all 4 PME databases (ApplicationModules, ION_Data, ION_Network, ION_Systemlog), then select db_owner as database role membership.
  7. Click OK.

If you don't want to create a Windows group:

To add an individual Windows user account to the SQL database server,

  1. Start Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio on the database server.
  2. Connect with an account with sysadmin privileges.
  3. Navigate to Security > Logins, right-click Logins, and select New Login from the context menu. This opens the Login - New window.
  4. In Login - New, select Windows authentication, click Search, and locate the Windows user you want to add.
  5. In the Select a page pane on the left, select User Mapping.
  6. In User Mapping, select all 4 PME databases (ApplicationModules, ION_Data, ION_Network, ION_Systemlog), then select db_owner as database role membership.
  7. Click OK.

NOTE: When PME is installed with Windows Integrated Authentication, the Windows account that is used to access the database is also used to run the PME services and the IIS Application Pools.

Check services

Open the Windows Services dialog and ensure that all of the necessary ION services are started. The services run under the Local System or the NT AUTHORITY\System account, by default. You can change the Log On As attribute of a service by specifying the account and password. Use the Log On tab on the service properties dialog to do this. The Log On As account must have read/write permissions on the product's installation directory, which by default is ...\Power Monitoring Expert\.

For more information the ION Windows Services, see PME Windows services.

(Optional) Create Windows user groups

You can create Microsoft Windows local user groups on a PME primary server (that is, on the Standalone Server or the Primary Server) as a way to manage user access through group permissions. The table below shows the permissions assigned to an administrator group and a user group:

Group Name Access to
...\Power Monitoring Expert\system		 Access to
...\Power Monitoring Expert\config
Administrator_Group_Name, which is the name you create for your administrator group. Full Control Full Control
User_Group_Name, which is the name you create for your user group. Read Change

Review Windows Task Scheduler

The Windows Task Scheduler has pre-configured scheduled jobs for performing backups, maintenance, size notification, trims, and archiving (on the ION_Data database) on the PME databases. Review these schedules and make any modifications that you require.

For more information on Database Manager and Windows Task Scheduler, see Database Manager.

Check IIS

Ensure that Internet Information Services (IIS) is working by typing the URL http://localhost/ in the address field of your browser to display an IIS image. In some cases, security restrictions may block access to this web page.

Set up Web Clients

Set up Web Client access in your browser, by entering the fully qualified domain name of the server hosting PME, or its IP address, followed by the path name. The path name is configurable during the install of the software. The default path name is /Web. Example: https://ServerName/Web or https://10.152.35.18/Web. For more information on Web Clients, see Client types.

Configure SQL Express for Engineering Client access

An Engineering Client can connect to a Standalone Server if the TCP/IP protocol is enabled in SQL Express. For information on how to enable this protocol, see Enabling TCP/IP protocol in SQL Server Express.