Installing the Health monitoring Windows service

Kentico provides a dedicated Windows service for Health monitoring purposes called Kentico Health Monitor.

You can use this service to additionally register performance counters. This service is also useful for writing values to the Scheduled tasks in queue, E-mails in queue and Error e-mails in queue performance counters. As these three counters require database access to get their values, using the Windows service for their monitoring instead of the application itself can provide better performance.

Installing the Health monitoring Windows service using Kentico Service Manager

The easiest way to install the Health monitoring Windows service is to use the Kentico Service Manager utility:

1. Launch the Kentico Service Manager utility from the Kentico program files group in the Windows Start menu.

   • You can also launch the KSM utility from Kentico Installation Manager using the Services button.

2. Choose the Kentico instance where you want to install the service (select the CMS folder).

3. Select the Kentico Health Monitor service.

4. Click Install. 

   

5. Click Start to start the service after it is installed.

You have installed the Kentico Health Monitor service, which is now running and ready to be used.

You can uninstall the service at any time by clicking Uninstall in the Kentico Service Manager utility.

Installing the Health monitoring Windows service using the command line

To install the Windows service from the command line, you need to use Installer Tool (InstallUtil.exe), which is a native part of the .NET Framework:

1. Open the Windows command line (type cmd in the Start menu search box).

2. Navigate to the .NET folder containing InstallUtil.exe (e.g. c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\).

3. Execute InstallUtil.exe from the Windows command line with the following parameters:

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    InstallUtil /webpath="C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Kentico\CMS" "c:\inetpub\wwwroot\Kentico\CMS\bin\HealthMonitoringService.exe" /LogToConsole=true /i
   
   
    

   The following table describes the used parameters:

   /webpath	Path to the CMS folder of the Kentico instance for which you want to install the service.
   second parameter	Path to the HealthMonitoringService.exe file in the Bin folder inside the application (typically c:.exe).
   /LogToConsole	Optional parameter that determines whether the installation progress is logged to the console.
   /i	If this parameter is used, the Installer Tool performs installation of the Windows service.

4. Open the Services management console (type services.msc into the Start menu search box).

5. Select the Kentico CMS Health Monitor (<CMSApplicationName web.config key value>) service.

6. Click the Start Service button on the top toolbar.

   

Configuring database permissions for services

By default, Kentico services run under the Local System (NT AUTHORITY\System) account. If you experience problems with services not starting, the Local System account may not have sufficient permissions for your Kentico database.

Either grant sufficient permissions for the NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM login in your database (at least assign a schema with the Connect permission), or use the Windows Services management console to change the Log On account of individual services to a different account with database access.

Uninstalling the Health monitoring Windows service using the command line

1. Open the Windows command line (type cmd in the Start menu search box).

2. Navigate to the .NET folder containing InstallUtil.exe (e.g. c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\).

3. Execute InstallUtil.exe from Windows command line with the following parameters: 

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    InstallUtil /webpath="C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Kentico\CMS" "c:\inetpub\wwwroot\Kentico\CMS\bin\HealthMonitoringService.exe" /LogToConsole=true /u
   
   
    

After executing this command, the Health monitoring Windows service for the Kentico instance specified by the /webpath parameter is uninstalled.