NI Hosted Services Help and FAQ
Welcome to NI Hosted Services, the home for NI's software as a service products.
Support
How do I get support for NI Hosted Services?
NI Hosted Services use the same support channels that all other NI products do - they have extensive online help and documentation, community forums, and paid support options where you can call or email a support engineer from ni.com/support. You need a ni.com User Profile, which is different from your NI Hosted Services account, to create a service request. You can also check the LabVIEW Web UI Builder Developer Resources and Forum for support.
Login
How do I get a login to use a NI Hosted Service?
NI Hosted Services does not use your ni.com User Profile as the login; you must generate a separate account by registering with the NI Hosted Services User Portal. This login is shared across all the NI Hosted Services you use. When you register, you will receive an email with account activation instructions.
What if I didn't receive the account activation email?
Normally, it takes just a moment to receive your verification email, but it can take up to two hours. If you are still having problems getting the email, you can have it resent. You also should make sure that you can receive emails from us. Please add niwsc.com and ni.com to your email whitelist to make sure the emails are not being caught in your personal or company spam filter. If you are unsure how to do this, talk to your IT Administrator.
How do I reset my NI Hosted Services account password?
To reset your password, go to the NI Hosted Services User Portal's password reset page and follow the instructions. If you are still having problems after visiting the password reset page, you can contact us at LoginProblems@ni.com. Emails sent to LoginProblems@ni.com can take 2-3 business days to be serviced and we recommend going through the password reset process mentioned previously for an immediate password reset. If you currently have paid support, contact an NI engineer directly at ni.com/support.
Can you send me my password if I forget it?
No; all passwords, as a security best practice, are stored using one way encryption and they are never stored or logged in plain text. This means that it is not possible for anyone at NI to decrypt your stored password, and we can't send your password to you if you forget it. If you forget your password, your password has to be reset.
Licensing
Do I need to purchase a license for a NI Hosted Services?
Use of Web UI Builder is free to everyone. You only have to purchase a license to build and deploy your application.
How do I activate my NI Hosted Service?
When you purchase a license, you will recieve an email with your license activation key. Log in to the NI Hosted Services Portal to activate your license.
Can I transfer my license to someone else in my company?
Yes. To transfer your license, go to ni.com/support to contact National Instruments support staff that will assist you.
What if I didn't recieve my license email after I purchased the LabVEIW Web UI Builder?
Please contact National Instruments support engineers. Go to ni.com/support and select LabVIEW Web UI Builder to get started.
Uptime and Performance
What if your services go down?
All NI Hosted Services have a 99.9% uptime SLA (Service Level Agreement) and we have engineered the services for maximum reliability. We employ operations staff around the globe to provide 24x7x365 support of these systems. We believe in maximum transparency, so in the event something does go wrong, we maintain the NI Hosted Services Status Page at status.niwsc.com that will always have up to date information on any issues and the status of all our systems. If we do experience a service outage, we will keep you continuously updated and will post a comprehensive explanation of the scope and nature of the outage as soon as possible.
Is everything working?
We believe in maximum transparency, so in the event something does go wrong, we maintain a status page for the services at status.niwsc.com that will always have up to date information on any issues and the status of all our systems. If we do experience a service outage, we will keep you continuously updated and will post a comprehensive explanation of the scope and nature of the outage as soon as possible. If you are experiencing a problem that we don't know about it, please contact support at ni.com/support.
How do I report a service outage?
In most cases, we will detect outages as soon as they occur and update status.niwsc.com. Check the status page to see if the outage is a known issue. Report outages through your normal support channels. Please do not contact Amazon for service downtime or product issues as National Instruments is responsible for all support and operations of these services.
How do you make sure other users' activity doesn't slow me down?
NI Hosted Services are multitenant, meaning you are using the same servers other customers are using when you access them. Most elements of our cloud system are designed to automatically scale with usage so that you never experience congestion due to other users' activity. Most of the services have specific per-user caps as defined in the terms and services agreements, which we use to make sure user activity does not affect other users. Our operational monitoring also instruments service performance, and our operations staff addresses any performance issues as they arise.
Security and Privacy
How is my data backed up?
For the LabVIEW FPGA Compile Cloud, we do not backup your files. Once you download your compiled design and your LabVIEW client confirms it has received it safely, all your files are deleted from the cloud. If a compile result is lost, you must resubmit the design for compilation.
For LabVIEW Web UI Builder, any files you specifically choose to save to the cloud are kept in redundant locations within the cloud to make them resilient against any one copy being deleted. Similar to the Compile Cloud, any files you submit to UI Builder to be built into an application are deleted from our systems as soon as you get them back. If you overwrite a saved UI Builder file, the old version is lost; UI Builder does not support versioning or have a Recycle Bin.
How is my data secured?
Any access to the NI Hosted Services requires a user to authenticate using a secure user ID provisioned in the NI Hosted Services User Portal. All calls from the user to the cloud are made securely over encrypted HTTP (HTTPS) with added security mechanisms for login authentication and data protection. All access to customer data on cloud servers is gated by services on the server side which re-check the end user's permissions on each access. No other end user can access your files.
Amazon's data centers are highly secure and have SAS 70 Type II certification. You can read more about Amazon's security from the AWS Security Center. In addition, NI has CISSP-certified security engineers on staff to ensure the security of our solutions from design through implementation. We conduct regular security scans of our Web-based assets to maintain high levels of security.
How do you respect my privacy?
All NI Hosted Services conform to the standard National Instruments Privacy Policy.
Who can look at my data?
Your data is yours. Your compiled applications are deleted from our servers as soon as you download them. All access to our cloud systems is controlled by secure certificates; even Amazon engineers cannot access the servers we use to host our applications. NI support engineers may have to see or touch your data in order to resolve production issues, but all NI supports engineers handle anything they come in contact with in compliance with our privacy policy.
How is my account secured?
Your account information is stored on our secure authentication servers, and your password is only stored once it has been one-way encrypted. Never share your NI Hosted Services login with anyone else. Besides being a violation of the Terms of Use, it can allow other people access to your compiles. Consider changing your NI Hosted Services password regularly to make sure only you know it.
Upgrades
Can I stay on an older version of the service when you upgrade?
No. As the NI Hosted Services are upgraded, all customers will be transitioned to the new version. We are taking great care to ensure backwards compatibility so that, if at all possible, your previous code will work without alteration. We will be performing small upgrades on a continuous basis to improve the services on a shorter timeframe than a normal yearly software release cycle.
How am I notified about changes to your services?
We will send out messages about planned outages, upgrades, security alerts, or any other necessary technical communication to the email address you use as your user ID in the NI Hosted Services User Portal. We will also post this important information on the NI Hosted Services Status Page.
Technology
How and where does NI host its Web-based products?
Currently we use the Amazon Web Services cloud to host LabVIEW Web UI Builder and LabVIEW FPGA Compile Cloud. We combine many of the Amazon cloud services such as EC2, S3, and SimpleDB into our products' implementation based on functionality, performance, and reliability needs. Currently we only use Amazon datacenters in the U.S. but may expand to Europe and Asia as needed. Please note that you are responsible for ensuring that you are in compliance with export regulations relevant to any technology you send to our systems.
What technologies do you use for the NI Hosted Services?
The servers we run on Amazon are a mix of Linux (Fedora and Ubuntu) and Windows 2008 Server. Some components of the services are Java-based and use Apache Web Server, Apache Tomcat, mySQL, and OpenDS. Other parts are Windows-based, and use Microsoft IIS 7, .NET 4, and other Windows technologies. And of course we use National Instruments LabVIEW software under the hood. Web UI Builder is a Silverlight 4 rich Internet application. Both the UI Builder client and LabVIEW FPGA communicate to our systems using REST-based Web services over HTTPS.