Installing Vault on a Shared Webhost

[Guest]

Hello, I have seen the guide on installing Vault on a webhost but I decided to take the plunge and just ask my webhost if they would be willing to do the install local for me(as I have seen recommended here). They sound okay with it but they had a couple of questions about the requirements/install that I wanted to pass on and ask about.

Here says the steps of installer do. It said it require Microsoft .Net Process account access to the %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys directory. Since it is a shared resource, it will affact our other customer if the program have any problem. Is there any work around for it?

Also it require SQL server DB. Will the install run correctly if the SQL DB is on a remote server? We do not have MSSQL install on your web server.

Any idea? I am almost 100% positive the answer to the second question is yes. But I have my own question I would like to add to it? Is there a way to change the debault database name and user it creates (I would like to use a DB name other then sgvault and sgvaultuser) the chances may be that this DB already exsists, if thats the case how do you resolve it?

Is there anything else I should pass onto my webhost? They seem willing to go for it which is frankly suprising but awesome!

Thanks for any help!

[jclausius]

Feel free to pass this information back to your web host provider.

Here says the steps of installer do. It said it require Microsoft .Net Process account access to the %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys directory. Since it is a shared resource, it will affact our other customer if the program have any problem. Is there any work around for it?

No, there is no way around this. Vault uses RSA for passing of sensitive data between server and client. The Microsoft Windows architecture requires the server have read/write access to %allusersprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys. The Vault server will then create information in a file that starts with "edb3f753ca89beb7d17f32a80a447d75". Failure to create or read that file will not allow a client to connect to the server.

As for affecting other customers, you may want to try this out, but once the file is created, if they change your access to read but for that file only, that may work with having a smaller impact on other users. Again, I am not certain this will work, but it is something they may want to try.

Also it require SQL server DB. Will the install run correctly if the SQL DB is on a remote server? We do not have MSSQL install on your web server.

All the Vault Server installer requires is a SQL connection to any SQL server that the web server has access.

Is there a way to change the debault database name and user it creates (I would like to use a DB name other then sgvault and sgvaultuser) the chances may be that this DB already exsists, if thats the case how do you resolve it?

This cannot be achieved through normal installation. However, you could achieve something like this by making a backup, restoring the backup under a different name. After the database was restored you could create a new user and grant them dbo/public access to the database. After this, you would need to modify the connect string in the server's web.config file to reflect the new user / database name.

There is one "gotcha". If you use SQL authentication, the tricky part would be to make sure the new database user has the same password that you used during install so web.config's encrypted password still works.

HTH