Moving to Microsoft Azure platform

With this release, we will move iQualify to the Microsoft Azure cloud, while at the same time modernising our technical software architecture to make it even more robust and scalable.

The Microsoft Azure platform allows us to build on a base platform which guarantees very high availability, and within which we can add near-instant capacity to ensure that iQualify continues to run smoothly: even at the busiest times of the day; even as the number of users continues to grow.

There are a few changes you may need to consider:

• Change IP address
• Well https:// no http://
• TLS 1.2 or higher

Change IP address

The external IP address of iQualify is going to change. There are two situations where this could affect your organisation.

• Data exchange with iQualify iSync
• IP restriction secure test taking

Data exchange with iQualify iSync

For retrieving user data, user groups and group memberships from AD (Active Directory), or logging in an AD user, iSync can be used. To enable this data exchange, the SaaS hosting infrastructure needs to access a proxy (web application) running on your organisation's infrastructure. And to make this secure, the external IP address of the iQualify hosting infrastructure is usually added to the firewall configuration.

You can see in iQualify's application management if your organisation uses a proxy for data exchange. You can see what the URL to the proxy application within the organisation's infrastructure is. See for this: iQualify Settings - iSync

IP restriction secure test taking

Your organisation may be using the Secure Test Environment (STE) to administer tests within a secure environment. This often involves setting up the firewall (of the institution itself) to restrict PCs in test rooms from accessing the internet, for example only the IP address of the iQualify STE. Access to other websites is blocked.

What should your organisation do?

If your organisation has now set up an IP restriction, the new IP addresses must be added to the firewall configuration prior to the release. To do this, check that the following IP addresses are currently listed in the firewall configuration:

84.38.237.100
84.38.237.102
84.38.237.108
84.38.237.109
84.38.237.114

If any of these above addresses are set up then these new IP addresses need to be added:

20.93.240.8/30 (20.93.240.8 to 20.93.240.8.11)
20.76.12.112/29 (20.76.12.112 to 20.76.12.119)

What are the implications?

As an organisation, you won't notice anything about the change in external IP addresses, provided the new addresses are added in time. After this release is released, the old IP addresses expire immediately. They can therefore be removed from the configuration after the release. At the time of the release, it is advisable to add the old and new IP addresses in the firewall configuration.

If the configuration is not changed after the release, users in iQualify may not be able to log in.

Well https:// no http://

It is no longer possible to access iQualify via URLs using the unsecured http:// protocol. Only URLs starting with https:// will allow you to access iQualify. The default behaviour of browsers is that they automatically turn a URL such as infoland.iqualify.co.uk into https://infoland.iqualify.nl. This means that users are not normally bothered by this. If you use direct references to iQualify, for example for shared (LTI) keys, it is advisable to check whether these use https:// as a prefix and adjust if necessary.

Security protocol TLS 1.2 or higher

With the transition to the Microsoft Azure platform, TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 are no longer supported. Again, for a standard modern browser, this change is not a hindrance. It could, however, play a role for organisations that address APIs of iQualify via another system or use an older version of i+Sync.