System / Hardware Requirements

Hardware & Operating Systems

If your center can use one of your university's existing file servers and/or SQL Servers, or if you have your own file server, then you will probably not need to purchase any new computers to run Titanium Schedule. Our software does not require its own dedicated server. All portions of Titanium Schedule will operate in a virtual server environment without issue.

Titanium Schedule is a client-server application with three parts:

Workstation: Microsoft .NET Framework 4.8 or later must be installed on each user's workstation computer.
Application Files: The application files are stored in a shared folder where they can be accessed by all workstations. This shared folder can be on any file server (Windows, Novell, Linux). The security for that folder should be set to center personnel only. No confidential data is stored in that folder unless a user exports and saves data there.
Data: Data is stored in Microsoft SQL Server (2022 or 2025 Standard / Enterprise Edition or Azure SQL Database recommended).

Hardware Configuration

Typical hardware configuration is as follows:

SQL Server is hosted by your university's computer support staff on a physical, virtual, or cloud server.
The shared application folder is on one of your university's existing file servers.

Frequently, universities already have SQL Server installed for other applications on campus. A single SQL Server can support many applications, depending on resources and licensing requirements. This configuration often requires no new hardware or software purchase. It has the added benefit that your local computer support staff will maintain the SQL Server and oversee automatic backups of the data. SQL Servers hosted by your computer support staff are usually in a secure area with emergency power, unattended backups, and reside behind firewalls.

System Requirements

There are separate requirements for the server, workstations, and the optional Web Component. The data is stored on the server in Microsoft SQL Server. Titanium is only compatible with Microsoft SQL Server and does not run on MySQL, Oracle, or other data repositories.

The hardware requirements for Titanium Schedule are very modest, and as you can see by the minimum required specifications below, almost any Windows-based computer you can purchase today is more than adequate.

Server Requirements

The following requirements are for the computer running SQL Server which contains the data from Titanium Schedule. At some centers, the SQL Server is installed on a university-hosted computer or the center's existing file server, so an additional computer is not required.

Desktop Operating System — Minimum: Windows 10 Recommended: Windows 11
Microsoft SQL Server — Minimum: 2019 Standard Edition. (Although Titanium can run on older versions, it is not recommended.) Recommended: 2022 or 2025 Standard / Enterprise Edition or Azure SQL Database.
Windows Server that hosts SQL Server (Disk speed and RAM are more important for database performance than CPU speed.)
- Operating System — Minimum: Windows Sever 2012 R2 Recommended: Windows Server 2022 or 2025
- Memory — Minimum: 16 GB RAM Recommended: Start with the minimum of 16 GB RAM and increase as needed for acceptable performance. If the server is dedicated to hosting one Titanium database, then 16 GB of RAM will probably perform acceptably with database sizes up to 50 GB and possibly up to 100 GB. For larger database sizes, multiple databases, or if the server does other things, then you will need more RAM.
- Free Disk Space — In addition to the disk space used by the OS and SQL Server files, you will need free space for the database, log files, backups, etc. Minimum: 25 GB Recommended: This depends on the expected database size. If you have no database size estimates to start with, then use 100 GB of free disk space. A small center that does not add a lot of scanned documents might only have a 5 GB database after a few years. A larger center with lots of scanned documents could have a 100 GB database after a few years. If you are importing data from another system into Titanium, then find out how big that database is and multiply it by 5 for a rough estimate of the amount of free disk space needed.

Workstation Recommendations

Each computer workstation that will be running Titanium Schedule will need the following:

Screen resolution of 1024 x 768 or higher.
Intel Pentium or compatible 1GHz or higher processor. (800 MHz or higher is supported but not recommended)
1GB Memory (512 MB is supported but not recommended)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows® 10 or later
Microsoft .NET Framework 4.8 or later
Disk Space: 200 Megabytes of available hard-disk space.

Web Component (Optional)

There are two available choices for the optional Web Component feature:

Installed and maintained by your IT group on an IIS server on your campus
Hosted by Titanium Software without the need for IT involvement

The requirements in the remainder of this section only apply if the Web Component is installed locally by your IT group.

The Web Component is an ASP.NET website and requires Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 8 or later with .NET Framework 4.8. The web server OS must be Windows Server 2012 or later. The web server must also be able to access the SQL Server where the Titanium database is installed. The web server will use a restricted account to access the SQL Server, and that account can only insert new records into the confidential tables. The account does not have the rights to view, update or delete any confidential information.

To encrypt data traffic between the devices used by clients and the web server, a minimum of Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 is required.

Note: If you are a current Titanium customer who is considering adding the Web Component, your Titanium Schedule database version must be 150101 or newer. You can see how to determine your database version by visiting the Program Updates page at our website.

Users, Database, Performance

There are several factors that could affect how many users in your center can use Titanium Schedule simultaneously with acceptable performance. Titanium Schedule itself is licensed for a given number of concurrent users. Our base product licenses your center for five users, and you can purchase additional user licenses in five-user blocks. Your license agreement with Microsoft for the version of SQL Server you use, combined with the performance of the hardware and network you use, will determine how many users your center can support with acceptable performance.

Titanium on Macs

Titanium Schedule does not have a Mac native client, but our software will work on Mac workstations under any of the following conditions:

The most common solution is to use a combination of Windows Server with Windows Terminal Service and the free Microsoft Remote Desktop app from the app store on each Mac workstation. OR...
Run a PC emulator like Parallels or vmFusion on each Mac workstation. OR...
Your IT department serves Titanium Schedule on a Citrix server.

Titanium Software, Inc. does not support issues with Mac computers, PC emulators, or the Citrix environment. Those will be the responsibility of your IT department.

Several universities successfully use Titanium Schedule with Mac workstations.

Security

Security is the most important feature in EMR software. Unfortunately, it often gets the least attention. Some software products store data in easily accessible files, like an Access database, which can be vulnerable to data theft.

Titanium Software, Inc. takes security very seriously. Our software uses Microsoft SQL Server to store your data. This allows users of our program to access your facility's sensitive data without having direct access to data files. Users are thus prevented from activities like copying data files to a flash drive, CD, or attaching data files to e-mail for sending off-site.

HIPAA

Even though Titanium Schedule has HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliant features like user names, strong passwords, internal security levels, a login audit trail, inactivity timeout, etc., there is often a great deal of confusion about what HIPAA requires and how difficult it is to implement and maintain.

Here's what our company president has to say about HIPAA and Titanium Schedule:

Titanium Schedule meets the requirements specified by HIPAA when it is installed as specified in our installation instructions and security checklist document.

The term “HIPAA compliance” applies to facilities, not to software. Software can have HIPAA-compliant features, as Titanium Schedule does, but it is the overall policies and procedures at the facility that determine if the facility is HIPAA-compliant. No software by itself can make your facility HIPAA-compliant.

For example, if a software user writes their password on a Post-It note and attaches it to their monitor, the facility is not HIPAA-compliant. If an IT department makes a backup copy of HIPAA-protected data, and the backup is not encrypted or stored under lock-and-key, the facility is not HIPAA-compliant.

Karl Zercoe, President

Encryption

Most of the questions we receive about HIPAA concern encrypting data. There are several places where encryption can be applied:

Password Encryption

Users' passwords must be encrypted, and this is done automatically inside Titanium Schedule.

Encryption of Network Traffic

Titanium Schedule uses Microsoft SQL Server to store data. SQL Server can be configured to encrypt all data while it is being transmitted using SSL. Our installation instructions explain the simple process of turning on this feature.

Encryption of Data on the Hard Drive

There are multiple ways to encrypt the files on the hard drive where SQL Server stores data. TDE (Transparent Data Encryption) is available in some versions of SQL Server. TDE has the added benefit of automatically encrypting backups of the database. You must be extremely careful to make copies of the encryption key and securely store it off the computer where SQL Server is installed. If the SQL Server fails, all your backups will be useless unless you have the TDE encryption key stored somewhere else.

Another way to encrypt the files on the hard drive is to use the Microsoft EFS (Encrypted File System) that is built into the Windows operating system.

There is more information on the these and other security issues in this whitepaper from Microsoft.

Encryption of Data Backup Copies

If you do not use TDE as mentioned above, then you will need to do something extra to secure the backup copies of the data. This might be physically securing the backups or using one of the many third-party encryption utilities. Make sure that encrypted backups can be decrypted on a different computer. Do not encrypt backups using an encryption key that is only available on one computer, because if that computer fails, all your backups are useless. As with all backup approaches, it is best to test your technique before relying on it. Backup your data, encrypt it, then decrypt and restore the data on another computer. Remember, if your backup encryption key is lost, your backups are useless.