Considerations

The simplest default installation assumes that Flow, player, all related apps and the MySQL database are installed on the same server. If this is not the case for your installation then you should review the following.

There are considerations for:

MySQL IP Address vs Localhost

The default IP address in the Flow installer is localhost. You have 2 options.

1. You can use the localhost default in a multi-server environment if you provide the MySQL server IP address or a host name in the Flow System Preferences - System > Database Location for Apps value.

   1. Setting the preference value only needs to be done once after the initial installation.

2. Provide the MySQL server IP address or a resolvable host name in the Flow installer

   1. This needs to be done each time it is run - initial install and updates.

Players and Apps

Many apps and the players now provide the ability to specify a Flow URL to automatically fill in connection details and verify access to features. If these apps will not be on the same server as the database itself then it's important to follow the above MySQL IP Address Notes (even if Flow is installed on the database server).

Flow

If the MySQL database is not on the same server as the Flow web site installation then you must

• follow the MySQL IP Address Notes section above

• one time - update MySQL user privileges to allow either allow root access from the Flow server or create a FLOW user as described in https://bannisterlake.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ST/pages/12615688

  • Because

    • by default Flow expects to connect using the root or FLOW user to give it privileges for adding users, managing tables, updating data and more during installs and updates.

    • by default MySQL denies access to the root login for any non-local user.

Time Zone Configuration

The Flow webserver and the MySQL database must both be configured to be using the same time zone. MySQL will by default assume the time zone of the server it is installed on but has parameters that allow it to be configured to a requested time zone instead. See these notes on changing a MySQL database time zone setting for an AWS RDS instance: https://bannisterlake.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ST/pages/2564849675

Time Zone Settings Displayed in Flow

You can check if the time zones of Flow and the database match in Flow.

As a System Admin user - on the dashboard look for System Tools and click on the Configuration link

Open

Then select the System Info tab.

Open

Below the Activity summary chart you will find a couple of sections with the info we are looking for:

The Web Server Time Zone should be have the same time zone as the database Session Time Zone and Global Time Zone.

It’s not a problem if the System Time Zone at Startup is different.

If the database values show as SYSTEM then make sure the System Time Zone displays the appropriate time zone.

Note that the MySQL time zone names may vary from the time zone names used by windows server but need to represent the same effective time zone.

After changing the time zone of the database you can restart the database instance to cause all connections to use the new settings. An alternative is to restart the IIS website which would cause all it’s connections used by Flow and BLADE to be recreated with the new settings and then restart any players and readers as well.

An option to restarting IIS is to use a new option to Clear Connection Pools via the button in the Database section of the Configuration - System Info tab in Flow (available in build 13.6.2.2 or later).

Ticker and Branding Players

It is assumed that the player will also run on a server in the same time zone as the database and Flow servers. Look in Flow for a Branding player defined with a channel having a time adjust value set.

Branding and Ticker players can be assigned to channels with a time offset value that affects how it reads the schedule for that channel.

To check for this - look on the dashboard for the Branding group - Players.

NOTE: The branding player settings for the channel do also apply to the ticker players that use the same channel.

Firewall

MySQL Server

You may need to allow incoming traffic from other servers to the MySQL server if it isn't already configured to do so. By default this is port 3306.