Installing Insight

The procedure below describes the installation of Insight. Before starting the installation, review the System Requirements to ensure the system is ready for installation.

  • Ensure there are no pending automatic system updates on the server on which you install Insight, as these may interrupt the EFT Insight installation process.

  • Insight v1.0.3 and later use a REST API; if you have installed Insight v1, v1.0.1 or v1.0.2, uninstall them before installing Insight v1.0.3 or later.

  • If the ARM database is using Windows Authentication, you will need to configure the Insight service to run as a Windows account that has permission to access the ARM database.

  • Start the Insight installation process with an account that has sufficient permissions. If the database account you are using does not have sufficient permission to create the Insight database, you will encounter an error and have to start the installation over (with the proper permissions).

  • When upgrading EFT Insight, stop the EFT Insight service before launching the new installer. If you are upgrading the EFT Enterprise Server that the EFT Insight monitor is pointing at, stop the EFT Insight service first. This will keep EFT Insight's BI service from generating errors in the "EFTInsight.logEntry" table.

  • (added in v1.0.7) Version 18.1.0.0 of Microsoft OLE DB Driver for SQL Server is automatically loaded during the installation of EFT Insight v1.0.7.

  • (added in v1.0.7) If you are using an Oracle database, you need to install Oracle Data Access Components (ODAC) for Oracle Client.

During installation, the following settings must be enabled in the EFT administration interface Administration tab:

  • Allow remote administration

  • Require SSL for remote administration

  • Enable REST API and REST API port (defaulted to 4450)

  • Run & Edit Reports (Optional permissions) for the EFT admin account.

To install Insight

  1. Double-click the Insight installer icon to start the installer wizard. The Welcome to Insight Setup page of the wizard appears.

  2. Click Next. The License Agreement appears.

  3. Review the terms and then click Next. The Select service installation folder page appears.

  4. Click Browse to specify a different location or keep the default location, then click Next. The IIS Configuration page appears.

  5. Specify the location and connection information for the EFT Insight web site:

    1. Specify the Hostname URL you will use to access the EFT Insight web service.

    2. Port 443 is set by default, or enter any port you would like to use for the site.

    3. Specify the physical path for the web site where the site’s files will be stored; leave the default or browse to a location of your choosing.

    4. Specify a certificate to use for the site. The installer is set to Create a self-signed certificate by default. Use of a self-signed certificate will result in a warning from your browser, so a CA-signed certificate is preferred. Browse to a certificate that you would like to use, making sure your Insight hostname matches. You can preview the certificate details by clicking View or refresh the listing by clicking Refresh.

    Additional help steps for creating a DNS entry or changing out certificates are available by clicking the question mark icons at the bottom of the window. A DNS entry is necessary to reach the site’s URL from other devices.

  6. Click Next when ready to proceed. If you selected Create a self-signed certificate, the Create SSL Certificate page of the wizard appears (otherwise skip to the next step).

  7. Provide the details to create a self-signed certificate:

    1. A Domain Name matching your selected hostname will be entered by default.

    2. Provide a Private Key Passphrase of your choosing. Record or remember this value for future reference.

    3. Specify a Destination for the certificate files or accept the default location.

  8. Click Next. The EFT connection settings screen appears.

  9. Provide the EFT host address, REST API port, Administrator username, and Administrator password for an EFT "Server Admin" account with "Run and Edit Reports" permission. If you are installing for an HA cluster, any one of the servers will suffice for connection. (Refer to the EFT help documentation  

  10. You can also specify the number of Days of historical data to import from the EFT ARM database. Please allow for longer syncing time on initial setup when importing large amounts of data.

    11. Large ARM data sets can take considerable time if loading months of data. The import currently loads 1000 records at a time. If an EventRule table has over a million records, the import could take hours. A work around is importing '0' days. This keeps past data from being imported and only new information is analyzed. When importing data from a large ARM database, to help improve import performance, you may want to rebuild ALL indexes on the following tables: Authentication, EventRule, Transfer, Action, and AweTasks.

  11. (added in v1.0.7) Select the Use alternative connection method check box to connect to EFT, if Insight fails to connect to EFT. (Requires .NET, which is an EFT Insight requirement.)

  12. Click Next. If connection is successful, the database type page appears.

  13. Now you need to set up the EFT Insight database. This is separate from the EFT Auditing and Reporting (ARM) database. All reporting displayed in EFT Insight is done against its own database. When EFT Insight is installed, it synchronizes with an initial dataset of the ARM data (based on the Days of historical data to import setting above). After that, the BI process (EFT Insight Service) continually extracts information from the ARM database and inserts it into the EFT insight database.  This is the data appears in the EFT Insight dashboard.

  14. Select existing SQL Server, existing Oracle database (v1.0.7), or Install SQL Server Express Edition. Then click Next.

  15. Configure the database:

    16. If you are connection a SQL Server database, provide connection details for a SQL Server that you have already installed:

    • Insight database name—A database name is entered by default, but you can change the name if you'd like—unless you are using SQL Express; changing the name is only available when you are using SQL Server. The name cannot have any spaces.

    • Authentication mode—Specify the SQL account to connect to or click Windows to connect with the current logged-in Windows user. (See the warning below regarding Windows authentication.)

    • Database server host address or instance name—Provide the host address or instance name of the Insight database.

    • Database owner username and password—If you are using SQL authentication, provide the SQL database credentials. This account needs permission to create and edit databases for setup to complete successfully. (If you later need to remove Insight, but not the database, you can reinstall Insight and connect to the Insight database with the same credentials.)

      • If you are using Windows authentication, these boxes are blank.

    (in v1.0.7 and later) If you are connecting to an Oracle data base:

    Connecting to Oracle should be looked at from these two perspectives:

    1. The ARM database connection from EFT Insight is read-only;

    2. The EFT Insight database is a read-write connection.

    Provide connection details for an Oracle database that you already have installed:

    • ORACLE system identifier (SID) - this is where the Oracle System Identifier information is placed.  The name cannot have any spaces.

    • Database server - this is where the IP address or server name is placed along with the TCP Port information in the format hostname:port to allow the connection to Oracle. The default TCP port for Oracle is 1521.

    • Database owner name and password - This is the Oracle system administration account. This account needs permission to create and edit databases for setup to complete successfully. This user will create the EFT Insight schema. (If you later need to remove Insight, but not the database, you can reinstall Insight and connect to the Insight database with the same credentials.)

  16. Click Test to test your connection to a valid database.

  17. Click Next. The EFT Insight database schema page appears in which you create a schema within the database for creating and updating tables and for inserting and reading data to/from the database.

  18. Under Schema details, create a schema name and schema password for creating and updating tables and for inserting and reading data to/from the Insight database. You can click generate to create a password for you that meets the operating system password policy (i.e., number/type of characters, etc.). If you already have a database account that you want to use, you can enter that here, provided it meets the password complexity requirements.

  19. Click Next. When installation continues, the Installing page appears.

  20. Once installation completes, click Next. The Installation Complete page appears.

  21. Click Finish to close setup.  

  22. Launch EFT Insight in your browser at the address and port specified during installation (e.g., https://eftinsight.com:4439/#/login).

    23. After you click Finish, EFT Insight will synchronize with the EFT Auditing and Reporting (ARM) database. Insight will import the historical data from ARM, based on the number of days you specified during installation. Once ARM and Insight are synchronized, going forward, data will import in real time.

  23. Next: Refer to Logging in to Insight