Database Server

Version Support

The versions currently supported for all database components are SQL Server 2016 and 2017.

Microsoft SQL Server Editions

Microsoft SQL Server comes in various editions that greatly vary in price. Choosing the correct version for your environment is important in order to provide the necessary features required by Forsta Plus.

In most cases, SQL Server Standard Edition will be sufficient for running Forsta Plus in a production environment. SQL Server Standard Edition also supports installation in a fail-over cluster, albeit only with two servers in the cluster, and database backup compression. For enterprise installations, SQL Server Enterprise Edition can be considered for high availability features such as 16-node cluster support, encryption at rest, online indexing, online restore, fast restore and support for multiple partitions in SQL Server Analysis Services (which may be used in the Panelist reporting feature).

To determine which edition of SQL Server is right for your environment, the following link might be of help:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/editions-and-components-of-sql-server-version-15?view=sql-server-ver15

SQL Server should be installed with Mixed-mode authentication to allow SQL login authentication from applications rather than using Windows logins. It is recommended that SQL Server is always installed with the SQL_Latin1_General collation. It is highly recommended to set a strong password for the ‘sa’ account or disable the account altogether after installation.

Note: Forsta Plus requires access to an SQL login with ‘sysadm’ permissions during installation but the account is not needed after the initial installation is complete. As Forsta Plus v2025 does not use any login account with sysadm permissions, a login may have to be temporarily enabled to allow future upgrades to be performed.

Note: If installing the SQL Server service to run under a named local or domain account, it is also recommended that the same account is used for the SQL Server Agent service in order to prevent issues with permissions to database files on the file system level.

Note: If using Forsta CATI, the user account for the SQL Server Agent Service must be added as a local Administrator user on all SQL server instances.

 

Required Updates

SQL Server 2017 is the minimum requirment for installing Forsta Plus v2025. It is recommended to always keep SQL up to date with Microsoft’s Service Pack and Cumulative Updates.

Licensing

Due to the way Forsta Plus uses connection pooling to connect to the database server, a CPU-license is usually the most feasible option as the amount of CALs required for a regular per-user license may not always be clear. For servers running SSRS/SSIS, licensing recommendations will depend on the number of users connecting to the individual features. Assume one CAL license is required for each Forsta Plus user accessing either SSIS or SSRS will give an estimate of the cost versus a CPU license.