Frequently Asked Question

Application Version: PlatoAtlas V10 and later

PlatoAtlas is a Windows exe serving web pages via Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) with data stored in Microsoft SQL Server, accessed via Microsoft Chromium Edge.

All of these elements are well-documented to run on Azure. PlatoAtlas itself does not require specific configuration to run on Azure; any required configuration is for the Microsoft infrastructure, depending on facility choices.

General advice for deployment:

Azure SQL Database

Azure SQL databases are highly compatible with SQL Server databases and there are no known incompatibilities for an updated Plato V10 SQL database. If facilities have older databases with deprecated field types (notably TEXT) this represents an opportunity to update those as part of the move to Azure.

Remote Access to Azure SQL database

For a remote IIS accessing an Azure SQL database, two configurations are usually required:

1. Enable the Firewall for the connecting machine's IP Address
2. Pick up a valid Connection String.

Both of these are standard Azure elements in the portal. Any required firewall settings should be per the facility's Azure firewall policies and the Azure database connection string is applied same as any other connection string in your Plato V10 config.ini.

ODBC Driver

The database connection string provided by Azure will automatically include a very specific ODBC driver with download link. You could deploy this driver on the server hosting IIS but unless there are specific Azure features you intend to use, usually you can replace this in your connection string with the ODBC driver currently used for PlatoAtlas. If the rest of the configuration is correct, older ODBC drivers definitely can still connect to an Azure Plato database.

When connecting to any remote database server, disconnections may be more likely depending on the quality of the internet connection. PlatoAtlas will attempt to automatically reconnect if an odbc connection is dropped, without the instance having to respawn. All PlatoAtlas versions after V10.2 have this capability. 

2) Web Server also hosted on Azure

PlatoAtlas is a relatively lightweight IIS application so if the intention is to host the web server on Azure, recommended deployment is via Windows VM. There are no additional PlatoAtlas config issues for this configuration.

Summary

PlatoAtlas database and/or IIS servers are easily deployed on Azure.