How to Set Up Offsite Third-Party Server or Cloud Hosting for Windward System Five

This guide focuses on things to consider when configuring Windward System Five for offsite hosting on a third-party server.


We are seeing customers outsource their hardware sometimes with negative consequences to their Windward Software experience. Although Windward System Five will theoretically run in many of these environments, they can create unstable and unreliable connections for our application to operate successfully. Windward System Five was designed to operate on a server in your business. Moving that server into the virtualized world consequently can cause issues with connected devices and networking, which can cause unreliable and unexpected errors to occur.


Windward's Offsite Hosting Recommendations

If you are choosing to host offsite, please keep the following in mind:


1: A Dedicated Physical Server 

Your server must only have you hosted on a dedicated physical server. This is called 'single tenancy physical server' or 'bare-metal' hosting on a physical machine.


2: Machine Virtualized on a Single Tenancy Physical Server

We have tested our application with virtualization using Microsoft Hyper V with machines virtualized on a single tenancy physical server. We do not support other virtualization technology.


3: Underlying Infrastructure Cannot Be Abstracted

The underlying infrastructure cannot be abstracted. 

  • This will create latency and our application is not designed for this.
  • Example providers include Google Cloud, AWS, Microsoft Azure


Unsupported Technologies

  • Microsoft operating systems no longer receiving support from Microsoft./ 
    • Windows workstations include Windows XP and Windows 7.
    • Windows servers include Windows 2002 and Windows 2008./
  • Microsoft RemoteApp Service (Support ended Aug 31, 2017).
  • Citrix Systems such as Metaframe or Citrix Virtual Apps.
  • Any distributions of Linux servers or workstations.


Important Notes

We have customer care teams configured to answer questions by functional and operational areas. 


Examples of functional support questions:

  • How do I do my bank reconciliation?
  • How do I place my logo on my invoice form? 
  • Where can I get a listing of invoices by date range? 


Examples of operational support questions: 

  • Why is my system so slow? 
  • How do I setup my hardware not to disconnect? 
  • Why am I receiving this error message?


We may be unable to answer some operational support questions if the root cause is with your server being hosted offsite or you are using unsupported technologies. Your hosting provider will have to aid you in trouble shooting some operational support questions if this is the case. 


If you find yourself in this situation, you have a few options: 

  1. Consider hosting with Windward System Five on Cloud
  2. Work with your partner to remove layers of abstraction and avoid unsupported technologies
  3. Move your serves back to an on-premise environment.