ACP Server License

Any user of Analytica, even the Free Edition, can share their models via the Analytica Cloud Platform (ACP) so that other people can view and run your model via a web browser. Lumina hosts ACP on a cloud server for individual and Group ACP subscriptions. An organization can also purchase a ACP license to install on a dedicated server computer. You can use any cloud service, such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, or Microsoft Azure. The advantages of a dedicated server are:

Reliably higher performance because the server is not shared with other organizations.
No limit on CPU time per session and the number of users--other than the capacity of your server computer.
Custom configuration of firewalls and security options by your IT team to protect confidential and proprietary data and models.
You may purchase the Optimizer add-on and [1] for challenging optimization problems.

Please contact sales@Lumina.com or call us at (+01)-650-212-1212 for more information and pricing for an ACP server license.

Here is an overview of the ACP server requirements, architecture, security, installation process, and updates.

Server Needs

The Analytica Cloud Platform software requires at least:

64 bit Windows Server 2016 or later or Windows 10 or later.
16GB RAM and 2 or 4 cores. We recommend at least 64 GB and SSD hard drive.
If you want to use HTTPS, you need to have an SSL certificate installed. The certificate needs to be compatible with Apache .

How to estimate RAM, disk needs

The amount of RAM, disk space, and number of cores you need depends on the memory and computation needs of your models, and how many users may use ACP simultaneously. You can estimate RAM needs by running the modelin Analytica on your desktop. Open the Memory usage dialog to see how much memory it is using. If your application uses a maximum of 5GB and you want to support up to 10 simultaneous users, you might specify at least 64GB RAM. (5GB*10 = 50GB plus an extra 16GB for operating system and ACP overhead).

You can test performance on most cloud platforms inexpensively. Spin up a server, starting with a modest configuration. Then add extra RAM, processors, or disk space as needed. With elastic cloud services, you can even upgrade the server temporarily when you expect a surge in demand.

ACP Architecture

ACP runs on a Windows server running any recent edition of Windows Server Operating System. End users access and run ACP models via a standard internet browser, such as Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge, running on their own client computers.

The ACP server has these software components:

Apache web server
The Analytica server - an ACP enabled Analytica process. The Analytica server process has to be running at all times.
The Analytica session process. Spawned from the ACP server process when you open an ACP session on your browser.
Microsoft Sql server (the express version works fine for smaller databases).

ACP Uses an Apache web server on the server front-end, with all browser interaction going only through Apache. Apache serves the static web content files (HTML, pre-built minified JS, CSS, App image files) directly. When the web-socket request arrives, the Apache proxy_tunnel_module proxies it as a websocket request to a back-end Analytica server process, which spawns a new Analytica process for this user session, and hands off the socket to the spawned process. Once launched, the user-session Analytica process communicates directly with the proxy_wstunnel_module, which relays this communication through a TLS websocket (wss) to the browser.

Running concurrently with IIS can be problematic, since both Apache and IIS listen to port 80. We recommend not using ACP on a server running a website with IIS.

Spreadsheets: Optionally, your ACP models may access Excel spreadsheet files to read and/or write. You can install Libxl, and standard library that supports all Analytica spreadsheet access functions. We recommend LibXL rather than using Microsoft Excel on the server, which can be quite unreliable.

ACP Security

We recommend configuring ACP to use HTTPS (rather than HTTP). HTTPS is the industry-standard protocol for transferring encrypted data over the internet. It is the same protocol used, for example, for online banking. To use HTTPS, you'll need to purchase and install the SSL certificate for your server. Free certificates are also available - you can Google "Free SSL certificates" for a list of providers.

You can also encrypt your model files before uploading them to ACP, using standard features in Analytica Enterprise and Optimizer. That way no-one will be able to see your data and algorithms even if they do get access to the model. Open your model in Analytica and from the File menu select Save a copy in.... It displays this dialog:

Check the Lock and encrypt the copy checkbox indicated above to save a model in encrypted form. Analytica and ADE can run encrypted models, but there is no way to decrypt the source file. So, make sure to retain an unencrypted version of any model before encrypting it.

Authentication

Firebase

The standard authentication method uses firebase. This authenticates users on the internet. Lumina can assist you with setting this up.

Apache Authentication

If the server is on an intranet and does not have access to the internet, you can use Apache authentication. We have installed ACP with all these authentication methods:

Apache password file
Windows SSPI authentication
LDAP to on-premises Microsoft active directory.
Openid to Okta

Installing ACP

You will need a computer server running Windows server.

ACP Files

The ACP files required are distributed as a "bundle" which is a compressed archive like a "zip" file. The bundle will be made for your particular server. When configuring ACP and Apache, you will extract the zip files into the applicable folders.

Installation process

You will need to install this things on the server: Apache, Google Chrome, Sql Express or SQL Server, Analytica, C++ redistributables, ACP code, an SSL certificate compatible with Apache, PHP (if using Apache authentication).

We recommend a non-admin Windows account for Analytica server, if at all possible. Using a Service Account is much more complicated depending on your security policies.

When everything's installed, you create an SQL database, set up an ACP Group Account, and add your users.

ACP is usually installed on a server via remote desktop connection by a Lumina technical support person. For more specific information or to install yourself, you can follow these detailed steps To_install_ACP.

Optional ACP settings

For server admins, there are some configuration settings which are not accessible to the user from the ACP GUI. For instance, turning off the visibility of certain menu items or changing the length of time for a session timeout. Most of the time these will be set during the initial install of ACP, but they can be configured later. See this page Customizing an ACP server .

Updating ACP for a New Release

Lumina periodically issues new releases for ACP with new features and bug fixes. For as long as you have active maintenance and support (included free for 12 months when you purchase an ACP license or subscription), Lumina will provide you free updates. We will provide instructions on how to perform each upgrade. Generally, the update consists of files to be copied into the ACP directory.