System Requirements

PracticeEvolve is a customisable solution, the system requirements outlined below are intended as a guide, the manner in which the system is used in balance with the expected system performance will determine the resources that are required. 

Server Specifications^1 

(for self-hosted setup)

Notes:

1. These specifications are a guide only, each site will have specific requirements and resources should be considered accordingly.
2. Server virtualisation is supported. It requires the same specifications as a physical deployment. We do not support ‘thin provisioning’, and it is done at the user’s own risk. Reserved resources should be allocated for both SQL and APP server Virtual Machines.
3. CPU and RAM requirements scale with user count. The Recommended CPU specifications are a guide suitable for an installation servicing up to 50 users, server resources should be monitored and increased as required, as you add users, data, documents and database complexity your server resources should be revised accordingly.
4. Schema design will significantly affect system requirements, an excessive or large number of fields will increase the required resources. In such circumstances, resources may need to be increased to accommodate this.
5. The manner in which the product is used can considerably increase the required resources, many users opening many matters for a brief period of time will increase the overall resource footprint. In such circumstances, resources may need to be increased to accommodate this, consider the impact your working patterns have on the PracticeEvolve Application Server, if everyone logs in at 09:00, this will have an impact on server performance at that time.
6. Consideration must be given to other databases and any other services that may be running, the consumption of resources by other databases or processes must be factored into resource calculations.
7. We recommend running the SQL Server and PracticeEvolve Application Servers on separate servers, each server will require separate considerations for disk space. The Practice Evolve Application services account users will require full access to the SQL databases. 
8. See Microsoft’s guidelines on SQL Server support: End of support options - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn
9. Windows Small Business Server 2011 (SBS) is not supported as it does not meet the minimum .NET Framework requirements. 
   
   

Important

Do not install PracticeEvolve or the SQL Databases on the same server with Microsoft Exchange or a Domain Controller.

This configuration is not supported by Microsoft or Practice Evolve.

Workstation Specification

• Microsoft ceased full support of Windows 7 on January 13th, 2015, with extended support continuing until January 13th, 2020. While PracticeEvolve currently works with Windows 7, we cannot guarantee full functionality after extended support ceases due to a lack of full support from Microsoft.
• Workstation virtualisation is supported. It requires the same specifications as a physical deployment. We do not support ‘thin provisioning’, and it is done at the user’s own risk. Reserved resources should be allocated that match the physical requirements.
• ** Microsoft Office applications must be the Desktop version installed on the user machine, terminal server, or remote session as Web-version services offered as part of Office 365 are not currently supported. The supported versions for MS Office products are the same as Microsoft's support life cycle for their office products. For example, Office 2007 is not supported since 2017 and Office 2010 is not supported since October 2020.
• ***While we recommend your server has anti-virus protection, we highly recommend that our data store is excluded from real time file write and access level checks. Checking each file as it is written will cause performance issues and in extreme cases can cause file access errors that will prevent the proper functioning of our software.
• t should be noted that the recommendation provided is intended to optimise system performance. Opting to disregard this recommendation could potentially lead to performance impediments in the future. This is particularly evident as resource-intensive applications such as Windows, Office, Teams, and web browsers, among others, are concurrently operational. In such scenarios, an 8GB RAM configuration can be swiftly consumed, thus affecting overall system responsiveness. To clarify, the system does not mandatorily necessitate a 16GB RAM configuration for functional operation. 
  
  

Additional Services

1. Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MS DTC) Service. The service needs to be running on both the application server and the SQL server. This is required to ensure cheque requisition and other accounting operations can run successfully.
2. Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Analysis Services OLEDB Provider, 64-bit (SQL_AS_OLEDB.msi). This should be installed on both the application server and client machines. This is required for various analytical functions available in the software. This is not dependent on the version of SQL installed and can be downloaded here: (https://pevolvesyd2.blob.core.windows.net/downloads/SQL_AS_OLEDB.msi)
3. Install SQL Server Management Studio. This needs to be installed to allow us to manage the database; SSMS provides tools to configure, monitor, and administer instances of SQL Server and databases. The latest version can be downloaded from here: (https://aka.ms/ssmsfullsetup)

Network Transport Protocols

The following network protocols are used in Office Evolve.

• Practice Evolve Documents – TCP Port 6087, 6090
• Practice Evolve Accounts – TCP Port 8001, 8003
• .NET Remoting over TCP/IP – This is used in all remote procedure calls between the client and the server.
• Static IP Address is required on the Server and the Internet Router, if not using a Domain name
• FTP – Port 21 is used to FTP client product updates from the server machine.

Bandwidth Guidelines

We can offer guidelines based on usage scenarios. All values we provide are dedicated to running Practice Evolve alone. This does not consider other network activity that users may perform or is required by existing infrastructure.

The bandwidth required by a Practice Evolve deployment will vary mainly depending on the number of users, the information stored, and the end usage of the product. On site testing and resulting, network configuration changes will help define the best requirements for network bandwidth. The primary bandwidth usage will be transporting client files stored in Office Evolve to and from the server.

On average, we recommend an availability of 50KBps per user. You can multiply this by the number of users to determine the minimum bandwidth required to sustain concurrent use. A 1MB document will take 20 seconds to download at this speed.

If you require faster speeds such as 100KBs per user, you can use multiple this again by the number of users to determine your network requirements.

Please refer to the examples to below.

Firm Office with 1MB files

Allow 10-15MB daily network bandwidth per user for system with...

• 5000 Office Evolve Customers
• 10000 Office Evolve Projects
• The average usage of Diary, Internal Mail, Timesheets, Workflow
• One Office Evolve Client shutdown and restart
  
  

Allow 25MB daily network bandwidth per user (with average file size of 1MB)

• 15 Document Opens
• 5 Document Checkouts
• 5 Document Check ins
  
  

See below table for reference.

Client Portal

The web-based collaboration platform can be hosted on the same server as our services or a separate one. Both choices are equally performant with the following requirements.

1. The portal runs as part of our standard services and will listen on TCP port 9000 by default.
   
   
2. A reverse proxy will need to be set up to point to the above (http://localhost:9000). Any service that is compatible with the above Server specifications is suitable. Some examples of free software that provide this functionality include IIS or Node.js
   
   
3. SSL Certificate is required for the HTTPS connection across the internet. We believe an encrypted connection is paramount to security. If you do not have a certificate, Let’s Encrypt is an example of a free service.
   
   
4. Flexibility to support your custom web address for users to access the portal. E.g., https://portal.practiceevolve.com.au
   
   

The nature of resource usage is difficult to estimate. This will vary largely depending on network traffic, including the frequency of document exchange. Based on current trends, we recommend the following for each concurrent user increment to the portal.

Staging Environments

It is important that testing environments attempt to mirror the production system as much as possible. To this extent, we recommend using the same specifications as the live system for any and all test environments as a starting point.

Users may choose to down-scale this environment depending on the firm’s utilisation.