Prerequisites

Hardware

FastClose Server

When procuring a server or VM to host the FastClose Server the following specs are sufficient:

If you want to use the scheduled report generation feature, then the server specification may need to be higher depending on the size, complexity and frequency of scheduled reports.

This specification does not include the Reader web app, which has its own prerequisites page.

If you want to run Microsoft SQL Server on this same server, for the FastClose repository database (more information below), the specification will be driven by the needs of SQL Server more than FastClose Server.

The server will need at least temporary access to the internet to be able to complete the licensing process.

FastClose Server can also be deployed to Azure and other cloud infrastructure providers. If you wish to do this, please contact us to discuss.

FastClose Desktop Clients

The FastClose desktop clients require 100 MB of hard drive space and we recommend at least 4GB of RAM on the user’s PC. FastClose is processor intensive so a Core i5 or i7 processor is recommended. FastClose will run on a Core i3 processor however it will be significantly slower.

Terminal Services / Citrix and Remote Desktop Server Installs

It is possible to install the FastClose client software on multi-user server environments such as Terminal Services or Citrix that allow a single large server to be used to provide a desktop experience to a large community of users.

A number of our clients do take this approach, however because of variability in data quantities, memory requirements on such a server are variable. Our current rule of thumb is that if running one report at a time, you would need 256MB of RAM per concurrent user to allow good performance.

Software

Operating System

FastClose Server has been tested on the following 64-bit operating systems:

FastClose Designer and Reporting for Excel have been tested on the following 64-bit operating systems:

FastClose requires a 64-bit OS.

Microsoft .NET

FastClose Servers

The FastClose Server, the Worker Service for scheduler, and the Reader web app server have a pre-requisite of the ASP.NET Core Runtime 6.0.x Windows Hosting Bundle. You can find the latest patch release for it here: Download .NET 6.0.

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.NET 6 is supported from Windows Server 2012 onwards and ships as standard in Windows Server 2022. It can be kept up to date via channels such as Windows Server Update Services, or you can opt in to use Windows Update.

FastClose Desktop Clients

FastClose requires .NET Framework 4.7.2 or later to be installed on PCs running the desktop clients. .NET Framework 4.7.2 is installed by default on Windows 10 & 11 and it’s a recommended update in Windows Update for the other supported operating systems.

FastClose Reporting For Excel

FastClose Reporting for Excel can be run in either 32-bit or 64-bit versions of Excel and we recommend 64-bit if running large reports. FastClose Reporting for Excel supports Office 2010 and later versions, including Microsoft Office 365 (on Windows desktop, not the web application).

FastClose Reader Web App Clients

Users can access the Reader using up to date versions of Chrome, Edge, Safari or Firefox from any device and operating system supported by those browsers.

FastClose Repository

FastClose requires a dedicated database on a SQL Server in order to store meta data such as ERP connection definitions and report definitions. No business data is stored there: no transactions or balances, etc. We call this database the repository.

FastClose will create the tables required for the repository and to do this it requires a login for the database which either has the dbo role or the ddladmin, datawriter and datareader roles.