Deploying your EMS server applications for scalability and security

Yesterday I wrote about some of the RAD Studio XE8 secure computing capabilities that are supported in the product features and technologies. Robert posted a comment asking whether the EMS Console app was secure as it was using HTTP for development and debugging. This is true.  I asked our EMS R&D team members. I was reminded that when you deploy your EMS server applications they run under Microsoft IIS using an included ISAPI.DLL that works with your EMS application package files. The tools that come with the deployment including the console app and browser interface also work inside an HTTPS environment.  Security is assured as long as you configure your IIS Server correctly.

Information in our DocWiki for EMS application deployment says: "For a production environment, we recommend to set up the EMS Server and the EMS Console Server on a web server. We currently support Microsoft IIS Server." The tools you need are included as DLL versions in the RAD Studio XE8 (enterprise edition and above). You'll find the DLL versions in the "C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\Studio\16.0\bin folder". Additional developer and packaging information is also included in the DocWiki - If you have created one or more packages of custom EMS resources, you must build them into package shared library files, which you need as well.

EMS Development gives you executables for the EMS server and console apps. These you can test and debug inside your own secure environment. For development we give you 5 user licenses. When you want to deploy your EMS based applications, contact our sales office or reselling partners to get your deployment licenses.

For the two main EMS deployment DLLs you'll need to configure IIS to know where they located, This is documented in the "Configuring IIS for the ISAPI DLL topic". The EMS DLLs are: :

• emsserver.dll, for example C:\inetpub\wwwroot\emsserver\emsserver.dll
• emsconsole.dll, for example C:\inetpub\wwwroot\emsconsole\emsconsole.dll

Additional information about setting up a secure IIS installation is provided by Microsoft including the following links:

How To Set Up an HTTPS Service in IIS - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/324069

How to Set Up SSL on IIS 7 - http://www.iis.net/learn/manage/configuring-security/how-to-set-up-ssl-on-iis

How to implement SSL in IIS - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/299875

IIS7 : HOW TO configure a website for HTTPS? - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rakkimk/archive/2007/05/25/iis-7-how-to-configure-a-website-for-https.aspx

Thanks, Robert, for the comment/question on my secure computing in RAD Studio XE8 Security blog post.