OS: Windows Server 2016

Setting up Helios on Windows Server 2016

This is a guide specifically for setting up a production ready Helios server on Windows Server 2016.

This may work on older/newer versions of Windows Server, but hasn't been tested with them.

Install Node.JS and MongoDB

Helios is written in JavaScript and runs best on Node.JS 10. Let's get started by installing this version of node:

Open Internet Explorer, go to https://nodejs.org/ and download version 10 of node. Currently this is the version marked as LTS, but make sure to double check before downloading. After the download has completed run the Setup using the default options.

Helios uses MongoDB as its database. MongoDB is a powerful NoSQL database that supports advanced features like sharding and master/slave replication. For our purpose we will simply install an isolated local database.

Head to https://www.mongodb.com/download-center/community and download the latest stable version 4. After the download has completed run the setup using the default "Complete" options.

Setting up Helios

Download Helios as a .zip file and extract it into an installation location of your choosing. Make sure that it is a location that can be written to. (Not C:/Program Files/...)

Open the helios-master folder and adjust your configuration as described in the "Getting Started" guide, but do not run the start command in the command line. You may wish to install Nodepad++ on the server since working with LF based files under Windows can be a bit... tricky.

Next go ahead, and open a command line in the helios-master folder by shift-rightclicking in this folder and then select "Open Command Prompt here". Run the following commands:

npm i
npm run build

MongoDB has already been configured as a service during setup. However, we still need to create a service for Helios. The easiest way to do this is to download and run a tool called nssm from here: https://nssm.cc/download

Extract it into the Helios installation directory and create a new file called "start.bat" in the helios install directory with the following content:

cd /d %~dp0
npm run start

Now run the following command in the (hopefully still open!) command prompt:

start ./nssm-2.24/win64/nssm.exe install helios

In the configuration window select the created start.bat as "Path" and the Helios install directory as "Working Directory"

Wrapping up

Now let's put the whole thing and reboot the server to see how it fares!

Instead of rebooting you can also enter the Services menu and start the "helios" Service manually, but if possible I'd recommend a restart to create a more realistic test scenario.

Helios should now be up and running.