What is Workflow Manager 1.0?
Updated: January 11, 2013
Workflow Manager 1.0 is a new server which introduces new capabilities for authoring, hosting and managing workflows. These workflows will run at high scale and density, and will support execution in a multi-tenant environment. The service builds on the successful programming model, runtime and activity library that was introduced with Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) in .NET Framework 4.
Over time, we intend to provide both a Windows Azure service capability, as well as a user-installed service capability, thereby providing user flexibility and symmetry across on-premises and Azure offerings. Initially, the capability is being made available publically as a user-installed service (for on-premises installation or installation on Azure Virtual Machines).
In addition, Workflow Manager 1.0 is used by SharePoint 2013 to run SharePoint workflows, and will be an inherent part of most Office 365 subscriptions.
Prerequisites (Workflow Manager 1.0)
Web Platform Installer checks for these prerequisites before it installs Workflow, and it automatically installs any prerequisites that it does not find. You do not need to install any prerequisites separately.
- .NET Framework 4 Platform Update 3 or .NET Framework 4.5
- Service Bus 1.0
- Workflow Client 1.0
- PowerShell 3.0
The following additional requirements must be met before you can run Configuration Wizard to configure Workflow:
- Instance of SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1, SQL Server Express 2008 R2 SP1, or SQL Server 2012.
- TCP/IP connections or named pipes must be configured in SQL Server.
- Windows Firewall must be enabled.
- Ports 12290 and 12291 must be available.
System Requirements (Workflow Manager 1.0)
SQL Server
The SQL Server instance that is used for various databases configured as a part of Workflow Manager must meet the following requirements.
- TCP/IP, shared memory, or named pipes must be enabled.
- Port 1443 on the firewall must be open to inbound and outbound communications.
- If named pipes are used, the name of the machine on which the SQL Server instance is running should have a name with no more than 16 characters. Named pipes use NetBIOS names, which carry that restriction.
- If TCP/IP connections are used, the SQL Browser service should be running on the SQL server.
- SQL Server service should be running on the SQL server.
- The following collation types are supported.
- Default Collation
- SP Collation
- Binary Collation
- Supported Authentication
- Integrated Authentication
- SQL Authentication
Current User
The user that is configuring Workflow Manager must meet following requirements.
- If the machine is domain joined, the user must be a domain user; otherwise the user must be a local user.
- The user must be an administrator on the computer on which the configuration is running.
- The user must have SysAdmin privilege on this SQL Server instance, otherwise, the databases should be pre-created and the Sql logon for the RunAs Account User should be created manually, before running the configuration, on all Sql instances.
RunAs Account User
The RunAs account is provided during Workflow Manager configuration and is used as the RunAs account by the Workflow Manager services. The Workflow Manager supports the ability to have the RunAs account user as a domain user or a local user. In both cases, this user must have access to the SQL Server instances. Alternatively, SQL Server databases can be accessed using SQL Authentication.
The RunAs account user will be granted a log on as a service privilege during configuration.
If all the machines in a farm share the same service account and the security policy requires the service account password to be changed at regular intervals, you must perform specific actions on each machine in the farm to be able to continue adding and removing nodes in the farm. See the section titled Handling Service Password Changes for this procedure.
