System Requirements
- 64-bit Windows (Server 2008 / Windows 7 or newer)
- Excel 2010 (or newer)
- Visual Studio 2010 Tools for Office Runtime
- Excel files must reside on an NTFS volume.
The server's RAM and CPU requirements will depend entirely on what sort of Excel / PowerPivot files you plan to refresh, and how much parallelism you require.
Installation
Each download/release includes windows installer (MSI) file, which is reasonably self-explanatory to use and install. Note that the installer will install a Windows Server - i.e. an application that automatically starts when windows boots, and runs invisibly in the background.
Upon completing installation, you will be prompted for credentials (i.e. a login) that the service will run as. Regardless of whether you choose a Windows built-in account or a user account, be sure that the credential supplied have permissions to Read/Write to the folders where the Excel files are, and have appropriate permissions on any underlying data sources used by the Excel files.