Install DocuWare On-Premise, but in Azure Cloud

Hi, in a white paper about DocuWare Cloud, you say:

"DocuWare Cloud is a "software as a service" (SaaS) solution. DocuWare in turn relies on the services of Microsoft Azure as a "platform as a service" (PaaS) for its own offering. All customer documents, files, and metadata are stored on Azure Storage. The databases are hosted by Azure SQL (managed service)."

But in the System Requirements for DocuWare Version 7.1

"Azure VMs are not supported for running DocuWare, neither for servers nor for clients."

The clients can't install DocuWare with their On-Premise license in Azure?

And why are Azure VMs singled out as not supported? Does that mean AWS VMs are supported?

A VM is a VM. We are running VM-based servers for our on-premise installation, so what is wrong with Azure VMs? Especially if DocuWare Cloud trusts Azure as its platform?

Thanks,
Joe Kaufman

The information is correct. A DocuWare On-Premise system is not supported in Azure and for that matter AWS. DocuWare Cloud utilizes a customized engine in order to operate in that environment. The issue is that Azure (and AWS) do not support the required IP protocol that DocuWare uses for inter-service communications.
So a VM in Azure or AWS is not the same as a VM in an on-premise installation.

Phil Robson
Senior Director Client Services, Americas

Phil,

Thanks for the explanation. Not sure I understand it (I thought things like Amazon VMs were almost entirely customizable and so could be configured like any local server, but you learn something new every day!

You might want to amend the documentation to either list all the unsupported cloud VMs explicitly, just say "no cloud VMs", or provide details about why some cloud VMs don't work (e.g. "Cloud VMs that do not support protocol <whatever> are not supported by DocuWare.")

Are VMs from Expedient and Rackspace supported, for example? What is the required IP protocol that is missing? Just curious...

Thanks,
Joe Kaufman

Hi Phil, thanks for your answer.

We have DocuWare version 7, working in AWS, we used one server for DocuWare System and another server hosting the database, both in AWS.

Can you tell me if the issue with the IP protocol happen only with DW version 7.1?

Hello

This post is not a new one, but seems to be the only one talking about DocuWare OnPremise in AWS (Amazon)

I am not sure I fully understand the issue

So is there any restriction to run OnPremise DocuWare (version 7.2) in AWS, one server for DW, one other server for MSSQL, both in AWS ?

Thanks in advance

Gilles

Hello, everyone. An update to this subject would be very welcome. We have a client that needs to migrate from another system but needs an on-premise solution (few users, lots of documents). A cloud system with a single server would be ideal. 

Hi Pedro, 

this is still not officially supported. It may work, it may not work. Maybe you can find a customer who has this working on the current release, but I do not know of any.
DocuWare provides no support for on prem installs on AWS/Azure if that is found to cause the issue.
There was another thread recently talking about on prem in Azure where a DocuWare rep answered the questions - AWS follows the same rules as Azure here.

Greetings from Germany, 
Simon H. Hellmann
DocuWare System Consultant

Hi Pedro, Hi Simon,

Since DocuWare Version 7.2 you can install and run DocuWare On-Premises on a Microsoft Windows powered VM in an Azure environment.
AWS is not supported.
However if you run DocuWare in a multi server environment (Scaling Form M-XL), you need to use the Azure Service Bus. For this a special configuration is required.

You'll find more information here:
KBA-36338  · DocuWare Support Portal
GitHub - DocuWare/MessageBus: DocuWare Message Bus
MessageBus/install-servicebus.md at master · DocuWare/MessageBus · GitHub

Viele Grüße / With best regards,

Gerardo Lisanti

Manager Product

Gilles - were you able to get your installation working in AWS? We have 7.2 on-prem but using AWS S3 buckets with a storage gateway for storage. Performance is fine storing documents however retrieving is slow through DocuWare. When browsing the UNC path they pull up fine so it's something in the configuration that is slowing things down.

Hi Joshua,

Sorry I cannot help, the DocuWare project on AWS platform was cancelled.

Reading the post from Gerardo I would be more than cautious with such platfrom.

Regards

Gilles