BBCA Fundamentals – Infrastructure –

BBCA Fundamentals– Infrastructure –

-Nitish Shrivastava

Section one

Introducing BBCA

BBCA gives customers dynamic control of their IT resources by offering software change and configuration management solutions within a secure, scalable, multi-platform environment

What are we good at?

Distribution Server Endpoint/Client

Server Management

Manage, configure, and maintain servers across multi-platform environments.

Application Manager

Manage the distribution, installation, and configuration requirements needed for complex applications.

BBCA Patch Management

Manage the distribution of patches (such as anti-virus and application security patches) and maintain a high level of security across your enterprise.

OS Management

Automate and accelerate operating system migrations across your enterprise.

Policy Manager

Perform policy-based distribution, updating, repair, removal, and license compliance of applications.

Inventory Management

Collect accurate hardware, software, system, and logging information about your IT assets.

BBCA Product Family

BBCA helps customers dramatically reduce costs and improve quality of service for today's most complex IT challenges, including:

Security Patch and Anti-Virus Management Software License Compliance OS MigrationInventory Management – Software and Hardware Distribution and Management of applications

Policy-based automation lets IT departments manage the entire state of their IT environments

BBCA Technology Benefits

Section two

Distribution

Bandwidth EfficiencyFirewall SupportSecurityScalabilitySelf-Healing

DEPLOYMENT

Policy based targetingWho gets what?When should they get it?

POLICY

Off-the-shelf applicationsWindows Installer Packages (MSI)Customer ApplicationsContent/Data

PACKAGING

Enterprise-wide ReportingHardware and Software InventoryOperating systemsSoftware usage

DISCOVERY

Change

Management

Lifecycle

BBCA – Distribution

Section three

BBCA Infrastructure

BBCACore

BBCA Architecture

Client Agents – BBCA Tuners

Distribution Servers – BBCA Transmitters

Content – BBCA Channels

Transmitter TunersChannels

Infrastructure core

BBCA agents {Tuners} are installed on managed endpoints {Such as desktop, laptop computer, server or device} and provide a platform for change management activities.


Tuners…

BBCA distribution servers {Transmitters} deliver content to endpoints {Tuners}. Transmitters host channels for distribution to endpointsTransmitters use the HTTP protocol to deliver channels to a client. The Transmitter listens on a port, waiting for requests from clients.


Transmitters

BBCA “Channels” are discrete, packaged units of “change” to be delivered / applied to an endpoint; examples might include: 1) an application {e.g. proprietary, Windows Installer, Java}, 2) data, 3) directories / files, 4) registry key, etc.

TunerTransmitter Channels

Channels

When the Tuner subscribes to a channel, it downloads all necessary channel components {e.g. files, applications, content, etc.} into the Tuner workspace.

TunerTransmitter

Subscription Request1

Channel Index

2

Get File Request

3

Content Download

4

Channel subscription

Endpoints

Console Server

Console Web Interface

Transmitter

Console…

BBCA Tuner

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Pol

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Common Management Services

•Collectively, the entire set of tools is called the Console.

•The Console contains all the tools necessary to administer a BBCA environment.

What is console

BBCA Console – the browser-based interface for BBCA applications

Infrastructure Administration – administrative toolsetSchema Manager – database and directory service configuration / maintenanceReport Center – inventory, software usage and centralized loggingPolicy Management – endpoint targeting and package distribution

Console Server

1. BBCA's core components – Tuners, Transmitters, and Channels2. c) A Tuner acts as the base for BBCA technology and resides on all

endpoints and distribution servers to enable communication between these components

3. The applications installed on BBCA Console include – Console, Infrastructure Administration, Policy Manager, and Report Manager

4. A Channel can deliver content such as applications, files, registry key settings, etc.

5. A client (endpoint Tuner) subscribes or requests to download and install content from a Transmitter. The clients can subscribe and update content automatically according to a policy.

6. The default listening Port for BBCA Transmitter = 5282

Core - Summary

Section four

Channel Management

BBCA “Channels” are discrete, packaged units of “change” to be delivered / applied to an endpoint; examples might include: 1) an application {e.g. proprietary, Windows Installer, Java}, 2) data, 3) directories / files, 4) registry key, etc.

TunerTransmitter Channels

Channel URL: http//<machinename>:5282/category/<channelname>

Channels…

When the Tuner subscribes to a channel, it downloads all necessary channel components {e.g. files, applications, content, etc.} into the Tuner workspace.

Subscription

TransmitterChannels Tuner WorkspaceDirectory

Distribution Server Endpoint (Client)

Channel subscription process

Client / Server communication (as well as storage) is optimized using:

File-level DifferencingByte-level Differencing CompressionCheckpoint restartBandwidth ManagementP2P distribution

Channel – Performance Optimization

Section five

Transmitters…

Mirror

Mirror

MasterLoad

Balancer

Repeater

Proxy

Master Transmitter – Primary source of content distributing content to other components

Mirror Transmitter – One or more Mirrors can be used to replicate the content of a Master Transmitter

Repeater Transmitter – One or more Repeaters can be used to distribute content across a WAN

Although typically considered pivotal to certain BBCA architecture, a Proxy is NOT a Transmitter type

Transmitter Types

A single Master Transmitter lies at the heart of every BBCA infrastructure; this machine serves channels to distributed endpoints and replicates to Mirror Transmitters and Repeaters

TunersMaster Transmitter Channels

– ch1

– ch2

– ch3

– ch4

http://master:5282/Global/ch1




GlobalGlobal

What is Transmitter?

One or more Mirror Transmitters replicate channels from the Master Transmitter and offer such benefits as: 1) fault tolerance, 2) high availability, 3) backup and 4) disaster recovery

Tuners

Master Transmitter Load Balancer

– ch1

– ch2

– ch3

– ch4

Mirror 1

Mirror 2

http://mirror1:5282/Global/ch1

http://mirror2:5282/Global/ch1

http://lb:5282/Global/ch1


GlobalGlobal

– ch1

– ch2

– ch3

– ch4

– ch1

– ch2

– ch3

– ch4

GlobalGlobal

GlobalGlobal

What are Mirror Transmitters?

Repeaters replicate channels from the Master Transmitter and serve redirected Tuner requests; redirection types include: 1) round-robin, 2) geographic, 3) IP- / subnet-based or 4) custom

Master Transmitter

Tuners

Repeater 2

Repeater 1

– Global/ch1

– Global/ch2

– Global/ch3

– Global/ch4

– Asia/ch5

– Asia/ch6

– Europe/ch7

– Europe/ch8

– Global/ch1

– Global/ch2

– Asia/ch5

– Asia/ch6

– Global/ch3

– Global/ch4

– Europe/ch7

– Europe/ch8Repeater http://master:5282/Global/ch3

Repeater http://master:5282/Global/ch1

What are Repeater Transmitters?

PublishPublish – initiated by Publisher or Channel Copier; used to create new versions of a channel and make it available to clients

Mirror

Mirror

MasterLoad

Balancer

Repeater

Proxy

Master Transmitter

Replicate

Load Balancer

Mirror Mirror

Repeater Repeater

Replicate – initiated by Mirrors, Repeaters and Channel Copier (similar to a Subscribe request)

Subscribe

Endpoints

Subscribe – commonly referred to as the requests from an endpoint for a published channel

Transmitter – Request Types

Master Transmitter –serves applications and content packaged into “channels.”

Mirrors – set up to regularly auto-replicate all their content from the Master Transmitter.

Repeaters – set up to redirect client requests from a Master Transmitter. Repeaters regularly auto-replicate some or all of the content from a Master/Mirror.

Proxies – used in remote locations where endpoints do infrequent updates.

Endpoints – A BBCA Tuner is placed on every endpoint.

Typical BBCA Infrastructure

Section six

Proxy

BBCA Proxies act as intermediaries between servers and agents, brokering requests from Tuners and sending files back to them on behalf of a Transmitter

Tuners

Master Transmitter

Proxy 2

Proxy 1

Although typically considered pivotal to certain BBCA architecture, a Proxy is NOT a Transmitter type

What is Proxy?

Preload Cache can be used to “stage” frequently used or large files onto a Proxy; verify preload success by checking for new “db.x” files in the “cache” directoryAnother way to optimize data distribution in the infrastructure.Customer can configure proxy and pre-load the data. Clients in that network would take it from proxy and thus optimize the data subscription process.Next section talks about the new distribution methodology that does not need any dedicated server (like proxy/repeater) but still optimize the data distribution.

Proxy - Summary

Section Seven

Summary

The infrastructure scales really well up to 300,000 endpointsWorks really well even on a very low bandwidth.Key features like Checkpoint restart, repeaters, Proxies and distribution using p2p offers great flexibility in optimizing the data transfer.BMC’s Blade logic too would be using this infrastructure for their data distribution.

Thank you

Documents

BBCA Fundamentals – Infrastructure –