System Requirements for HotDocs Server

HotDocs Server 11.3

Systems outfitted with the “minimum” requirements perform at a “minimum” level. If you care about assembly performance, or if you have more than a very few users, you should scale up resources in all areas as needed.

Hardware Requirements

The hardware requirements for your system vary depending upon the type and complexity of the templates you expect HotDocs Server to assemble, the number of other applications running on your server, the load the server is likely to experience, and the architecture of the HotDocs Server host application.  These hardware requirements are intended to accommodate the needs of HotDocs Server exclusively, and do not include resources required by your host application or its users, other applications also expected to run on the same hardware, or even the resources consumed by Windows Server itself.

HotDocs Server performance is primarily bound by disk I/O speed, which means you should ensure that the disk system is as fast as possible. Also, additional RAM can improve disk I/O speed by allowing the operating system to cache more files in system memory. The basic minimum hardware configuration is as follows:

  • 2 or more processors (2 GHz or faster) (Single processor machines can work well for development and lower load production environments.)
  • At least 1GB RAM available (2 GB recommended) for the HotDocs Server process
  • At least 500MB of fast local storage to accommodate software, templates and temporary/working files

In low-load, non-performance-critical situations, HotDocs Server can run on a virtual machine and using a virtual disk; however, physical hardware (and most especially physical disk storage) yields significantly better performance, especially under load.
Depending on the architecture of your host application, HotDocs Server may require additional RAM to accommodate a large number of concurrent users.

Software Requirements

Prerequisites

The prerequisites need to be installed manually if using the MSI installers.

The setup programs include the following prerequisite installs:

  • Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2 (web install)
  • Microsoft Visual C++ 2019 Redistributable Package (x64)
  • Microsoft Visual C++ 2019 Redistributable Package (x86)

Optional Prerequisites

Only required if using Silverlight:

  • Microsoft Silverlight 5 SDK

Requirements

Runtime Libraries

  • .NET Framework 4.7.2 or higher
  • ASP.NET v4 (if using)

Operating System

  • Windows Server 2012 (support ends Oct-23)
  • Windows Server 2012 R2 (support ends Oct-23)
  • Windows Server 2016
  • Windows Server 2019
  • Windows Server 2022

Requirements for Your End Users

HotDocs Server exists to generate documents from templates created in HotDocs Developer. You create a host application to present those templates to your end users in the form of interviews. Your end users use a web browser to provide the data needed to generate a finished document from the interview, and they must then be able to open the finished document.

Your end users must have certain software installed on their computers to complete browser-based interviews or view assembled documents. You should make your end users aware of their software requirements:

  • A Web browser capable of displaying a HotDocs interview.
  • Any word processor (such as WordPerfect® or Microsoft® Word) that can display, edit, or print an assembled text document.
  • HotDocs® Filler (Windows only) for assembled HFD and HPD form documents.
  • Any PDF viewer (such as Adobe® Reader®) for viewing or printing assembled documents in the PDF format

Port Requirements

To facilitate the remote management of HotDocs Server, enable port 9851 for all instances of HotDocs Server.

It may also be necessary to enable the following inbound rules in Windows Firewall:

  • Windows Management Instrumentation (Async-In)
  • Windows Management Instrumentation (DCOM-In)
  • Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI-In)