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FTS Server prerequisites

You must install the File Type Support (FTS) Server on a Microsoft Windows computer. The FTS launcher runs as a Windows Service process. Individual FTS Servers run as Windows processes.

The FTS Server can communicate with WorldServer installations on Windows or on Linux.

FTS system requirements

It is important to understand the following requirements before you download and install FTS Server.
  • Minimum operating system — Microsoft Windows Server 2012 or 2016, standard or enterprise edition.
  • (Recommended) Separate machine to host the FTS Server.

    You can have multiple FTS Servers connected to your WorldServer installation. The servers can share a single Windows computer. SDL recommends that you install FTS Servers on a separate computer than WorldServer, but, in lower-demand installations, a single FTS Server can reside on the same computer as a Windows installation of WorldServer.

  • Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2 (provided).
  • The vcredist_x86.exe version of the C++ 2013 redistributable package, available here .
  • Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2017 (x86). Make sure that you download the 32-bit version (x86) regardless of your system configuration. You can download it from the official Microsoft website.
  • Shared directories for WorldServer and the FTS Server, supporting the shared file system connection and the FTS Server log.

    These are defined in the WorldServer general.properties file (located in the WS_CONFIG folder) with the name ftsserver_shared_directory and are required as an entry for the FTS Server installation process.

When using the FTS Server in WorldServer, it is important to note that the default operating system cultures, default .NET cultures, and user-defined cultures determine which cultures are available. The version of Windows on which the FTS Server is installed also plays a role in which .NET culture codes are available. Not all versions of Windows have all .NET cultures available. For example, Windows Server does not support a number of cultures. The same is true for certain locales in WorldServer that have never been supported by .NET. You can map these WorldServer locales to .NET cultures in the exchange.properties file.

When deploying WorldServer and FTS in a mixed Linux/Windows environment and using NFS, you must configure Windows Active Directory with Identity Management for Linux. By doing so, you can map Windows user names to Linux user names.

All WorldServer and FTS Server Service 'run-as' users must have read/write access to:
  • The directory paths in UNC format for AIS file system mounts in WorldServer
  • The UNC path defined in general.properties to 'ftsserver_shared_directory' (Example: //servername/pathname)
  • The UNC path defined in general.properties to WorldServer's 'temp_file_path' (Example: //servername/pathname)

Supported databases

The FTS Server uses the WorldServer database, and therefore works with the two types of databases that WorldServer supports:
  • Microsoft SQL Server
  • Oracle

Microsoft Office file types

With the new versions of the Microsoft Excel 2000-2003 and Rich Text Format (RTF) file types, added in WorldServer 11.3, you no longer need to have Microsoft Office installed on the machine that runs the FTS Server. If you want to keep using the deprecated versions, however, you still need Microsoft Office 2007 or later (or Office 2003 with the 2007 compatibility pack) on your FTS Server machine.