To get started with Subscription Manager, there are multiple items that need to be looked at. The first set of items to do include making sure you meet all of the prerequisites before installing and setting up Subscription Manager, and then following the steps in this documentation to install and configure Subscription Manager successfully.
Prerequisites
General
Before starting the installation process for Subscription Manager, make sure you have the following:
- HTTPS should be set up on the server.
- Available SQL Server instance that can be used. You will be required to specify a username and password for this instance if you plan to connect to it via SQL Server authentication.
- Make sure you’ve downloaded the installer for Subscription Manager from here.
- You will need at least one PKCS 12 archived certificate .pfx file. You will need a signing certificate and a certificate for encryption and decryption. You may use the same certificate for both. All certificates have to contain a private key.
- An e-mail account that can be used to send notifications. During the installation process, you will be asked to provide the SMTP configuration details.
- .NET Framework 4.5 and IIS features should be enabled on the machine you are installing the software on.
Server
The following server specifications are required:
- Windows Server 2012+
- SQL Server 2014+
- IIS 7.0+
Generating a certificate
Depending on your requirements, you may need to generate a certificate vs buying one. The steps below will provide one way of generating a certificate. Please note that there are several different ways to generate certificates.
– Download OpenSSL for Windows
– Open a command prompt and navigate to the OpenSSL32 directory on your PC, and change to the /bin directory
– Execute the commands below, replacing the privatekey and public_privatekey with a common name. The first line generates a private key. The second creates a X509 certificate (.cer file) containing your public key, and the third line of code exports your x509 certificate and private key to a .pfx file
- openssl genrsa -out privatekey.pem 2048
- openssl req -new -x509 -key privatekey.pem -out publickey.cer -days 1825
- openssl pkcs12 -export -out public_privatekey.pfx -inkey privatekey.pem -in publickey.cer
Use the resulting .pfx file when asked for in the installer. The Common Name/Subject Name you specified above will also have to be specified in the installer.