Hi everyone,
We’re setting up a new 2026 R1 on-premise install on Windows Server 2022. It will have two instances, Production and Sandbox, and each needs its own hostname:
https://erp.company.com → Production
https://erp-sb.company.com → Sandbox
Before we build it, we’d like to follow the recommended IIS layout. These are the two options we see:
Option 1: applications under Default Web Site (the Configuration Wizard’s default)
The wizard deploys both instances as applications under Default Web Site (/Prod and /Sandbox).
Both hostnames are bound to Default Web Site, and a URL Rewrite rule redirects each root to its application.
The URLs become https://erp.company.com/Prod/....
Option 2: a dedicated IIS site per instance, at the root
We create a separate IIS site for each instance with a host-header binding, and run the instance at the site root.
The URLs are clean: https://erp.company.com/....
As far as we can tell, the wizard doesn’t create sites, so the sites would have to be set up by hand before deployment.
Questions
- Which layout does Acumatica recommend for production on-premise installs, and why?
- If we go with Option 2, what’s the supported way to deploy an instance at the root of a dedicated site? Will the Configuration Wizard recognize and upgrade those instances correctly in future versions?
- How are Acumatica SaaS instances (*.acumatica.com) configured? Is each one its own site at the root, or an application behind a reverse proxy or load balancer? We’d like to match that pattern if it’s practical for on-premise.
- With Option 1, are there any downsides to having Production and Sandbox share Default Web Site? For example, inherited site-level settings, shared IIS logs, or each hostname reaching both instances.
- Are there any path-related issues with Option 1 to plan for, such as REST/OData endpoints, OAuth connected applications, SSO redirect URIs or the mobile app?
Thanks in advance for any guidance or experience you can share.