Operational Requirements
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      Pulse

      Describes the operational requirements for the Pulse product

      This article is for IT and security professionals

      Technical Overview

      Pulse (previously known as BEIMS) is a on-premise, thick-client works management solution.

      Devices

      Pulse runs primarily as a standalone application in an on-premise deployment.  It requires Windows as a platform.

      While it will run on earlier versions of Windows, FMI only supports Pulse when it is running on a version of Windows currently in support by Microsoft.

      For recommended hardware and software, see Pulse Technical Requirements.

      Architecture


      1. The Pulse product is delivered primarily as a client-server application.   An application database running on SQL Server is required on the back-end.
        1. Authentication information is stored in a SQL Server database.   Passwords are not stored, but are salted and hashed with a proprietary algorithm.
        2. Authorization information is stored in a SQL Server database as a list of roles to support the role-based authorization mechanism for Pulse.
      2. Desktop Applications running on Window required direct access to the database – using a classic client-server computing model.  This is done use SQL Server direct connection on port 1433.
      3. Some product extensions to Pulse are also delivered internally using a web model, these use a three-tier model instead of client-server.  In this model an additional web application server is deployed to handle web traffic.
        1. This requires IIS.
        2. The configuration of the application, virtual directory, ports, and certificates are the responsibility of the customer.  FMI recommends that only HTTPS on port 443 is used.
      4. Web Applications access the database indirectly through the one of the Pulse web applications.  This is done either through HTTP or HTTPS depending on the client configuration of the IIS server.

      The client-server model that Pulse was built around was very popular before prevalence of web applications. This model assumes that the database, the servers, and all the clients are running on a private local network.  These assumptions determined the design of client-server architectures especially with respect to performance and security.  This model is not suitable for Internet delivery.  FMI does not recommend nor license Pulse for Internet or cloud deployments.