Deploying Lansweeper in AWS Using An RDS Database Guide

[ali-alhammadi]

I wanted to post this as I was not able to find any details/guides about how to deploy Lansweeper in AWS utilizing RDS for the database.  With some testing, I currently have a production Lansweeper environment running on an EC2 instance and an RDS database.

The only post that I found discussing this architecture was this:

Installation Guide for installing Lansweeper in AW... - Lansweeper Community - 27539

The challenge mickjf was facing is that AWS does not support assigning the sysadmin server-level role as the service that AWS provides is completely managed and does not allow any input from the user to the OS. During the Lansweeper installation if you choose to connect to an external database and provide the details, it checks if the provided user has the sysadmin role. If it does not, it will not proceed with the installation.

I found a reasonable workaround to solve this issue. This was much easier than anticipated.

Keep in mind that this is for a fresh install of Lansweeper.

The configuration for the RDS is as follows:

1. Created an RDS with SQL Server Web Edition Engine.
2. Created an empty database in the RDS.
3. Created a user with admin privilege on the database.
4. Allow port 1433 for the IP of the Lansweeper server in the RDS Security Group.

Note: Make sure to choose the correct time zone upon creating the RDS. This cannot be changed when created. If you encounter this issue, you can follow this guide from the AWS documentation and set the time zone again when restoring the RDS from the backup.

Importing and exporting SQL Server databases using native backup and restore - Amazon Relational Dat...

The solution is as follows:

1. During Lansweeper installation, install it using the LocalDB.
2. After a successful install using LocalDB, stop the Lansweeper Server and Lansweeper LocalDB services.
3. Launch the ConfigEditor.exe found in C:\Program Files (x86)\Lansweeper\Tools and modify both Service and Website tabs.
4. Edit the Data Source and input the RDS endpoint, User ID, and Password with the credentials that you created for the RDS DB instance in both tabs.
5. Save the configuration using the Save button.
6. Start the Lansweeper Server service.

Lansweeper will now skip checking if the user has the sysadmin role, proceed to check the database. It will find that the schema is missing and create it.

You can following along this process and tail the logs by launching PowerShell and entering the following commands:

cd 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Lansweeper\Service\'
Get-Content errorlog.txt -Wait -Tail 30

You can verify the connection to the database using DatabaseMaintainance.exe found in C:\Program Files (x86)\Lansweeper\Tools.

After that Lansweeper should up and running using an RDS database.

I hope that the Lansweeper team could test this themselves and modify it to be included in the official documentation.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

[Mercedes_O]

This is really helpful - thank you for sharing with the rest of the community

[ali-alhammadi]

Happy to help