Ellipse 8 Cloud Architecture and ... - Amazon Web Servicesec2-54-235-97-194.compute-1.amazonaws.com/... · hosting model, both of which are covered in this document. Ellipse provides

Ellipse 8 Cloud Architecture and DeploymentGuide

Ellipse 8 Cloud Architecture and DeploymentGuide

ContentsEllipse 8 Cloud Architecture and Deployment Guide 3

Commercial In Confidence 5

Preface 6

Mission 6

Operational Context 6

Geographical Area Addressed 6

Operational Overview 7

Geographical Diversity 7

Ellipse 8 Architectural Views 8

High Level View 8

Domains 9

Domain delineation 9

Expanded View 9

Ellipse 8 9

Connect Integration Platform 10

Other ABB Applications 10

Ancillary, Security and Data 10

Other Systems 10

Users 11

Infrastructure Administrators 11

Deployment View 11

Physical view 11

Virtual Appliance Overview 13

Azure resources for Ellipse 13

Resource Planning: 13

Environment Types: 14

DEV-ALL - Development Environment: 14

TST-FULL - Test Environment: 15

PRD-SML - Production Environment - Small 15

PRD-LARGE - Production Environment - Large 15

ABB Appliance Hardware 16

Standard Appliance 17

Small Appliance 17

Micro Appliance 17

Scalability view 17

Availability view 18

Internal load balancing 19

High Availability 19

Disaster Recovery 20

Backup and Recovery 20

Components and Key Network Protocols View 20

Key network protocols 22

Integration Views 23

Web Services 24

What functionality is provided? 24

How do you access the functionality? 24

How is it used? 24

ETL view 25



How is it used? 25

Spatially enabled applications 25



How is it used? 26

Map Panel Connections 26

For customers without a GIS system 26

For customers with an existing GIS system 26

LinkOne WebView 27



How is it used? 27

Pre-defined Integration 27



How is it used? 28

Software View 28

Security View 29

Ellipse Authentication 30

Ellipse Authorisation 30

Ellipse 8 Deployment 31

System and Software Requirements 31

Oracle Linux (OL) 6.6 DVD 32

Hosting Options 32

Managed Services 32

Customer Hosting 33

Bandwidth Requirements 34

Bandwidth Considerations 34

Bandwidth Calculations 35

Support considerations 35

Monitoring 35

Skills and Tools 36

Support FAQ 36

Outage and fix Scenarios 38

Terms and Abbreviations 40

Commercial In ConfidenceCopyright 2016 ABB

All Rights Reserved

Confidential and Proprietary

Legal Disclaimer

The product described in this documentation may be connected to, and/or communicate information and data via, a networkinterface, which should be connected to a secure network. It is your sole responsibility to ensure a secure connection to thenetwork and to establish and maintain appropriate measures (such as but not limited to the installation of firewalls, applicationof authentication measures, encryption of data, installation of antivirus programs, etc.) to protect the product, the network,your systems, and the interface against any kind of security breach, unauthorised access, interference, intrusion, leakage,damage, or corruption or theft of data. We are not liable for damages or losses related to any such security breach,unauthorised access, interference, intrusion, leakage, damage, or corruption or theft of data.

PrefaceThis guide provides information about the architecture and deployment of Ellipse 8 on the Microsoft Cloud Platform, Azure. It isintended for planners, project managers, and technical staff and provides a comprehensive overview of the productarchitecture and main approaches to installation, software upgrades, through life support and operations concepts, andconfiguration options.

With an understanding of the architecture, customers/implementers are better able define a framework upon which discussionand implementation plans relevant to their project can be established in support of their Ellipse 8 implementation.

The deployment overview enables customers to begin to take advantage of the opportunities that Ellipse 8 provides to simplifyinstallation, increase scalability, improve performance and expand capacity.

NoteThis guide does not provide detailed installation instructions. Refer to the Ellipse 8 Installation and Ellipse 8 Operationsguides for detailed information.

MissionABB's mission is to support customers' operations through the provision of timely, relevant and accurate Enterprise AssetManagement (EAM) information. From a technical perspective ABB's mission is to simplify the technical architecture required todeploy Ellipse 8. Key areas of focus are:

• Architecture

• Scalability

• Availability

• Deployment

Operational ContextEllipse 8 provides support for continuous operations in the following environments:

• Customer installed and managed

• ABB Managed Services, customer site managed

• ABB Managed Services, ABB data centre managed

• ABB Managed Service, external cloud managed

Geographical Area AddressedEllipse 8 operates in geographically dispersed scenarios, namely:

• Major city with geographically dispersed users including offshore scenarios.

• Remotely deployed operations in difficult geographical environments.

Operational OverviewA customer chooses Ellipse 8 to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their Enterprise asset management (EAM)activities.

Ellipse 8 has the following key objectives:

• Simplification of the systems environment resulting in lower complexity, operating costs and improved responsiveness tochange

• Improved standardisation of business processes across an organisation

• Integration with other ERP systems, such as SAP and OracleThis has been achieved by:

• Open Source technology as the core underlying Ellipse 8

• Introduction of standard configurations designed, configured and tuned with specific scale in mind.

• An integration platform (ABB Connect)

• A rich client philosophy, using a browser implemented client, which provides the ability to access your application almostanywhere.

This document provides information on the Ellipse 8 architecture and deployment. The key benefits of Ellipse 8 architectureand deployment are:

• Ellipse 8's architecture has simplicity in its design.

• Ellipse 8 has been architected around a Web Based java paradigm. It is built on the open source application server stackincorporating JBOSS as the application server technology. Users of the system interact through a web browser.

• Ellipse 8's Web interface has been designed with consistency as a core tenet. The investment in the customer experiencehas significantly improved the usability and manageability.

• End users of the system are located in numerous disparate geographies around the world. In particular assetmanagement occurs in remote geographies and network access to these parts of the world are serviced by networks ofvarying quality, ranging from good quality LAN infrastructure, to variable quality satellite networks. Ellipse 8 has beendesigned to operate across all of these networks.

• The architecture and scalability options are designed to operate in this wide range of user geographies. Capacity planningis simple using the scalable unit architecture and coupled with deployment to commodity Intel architecture.

• An excellent if not compelling price performance function profile.

• A low total cost of ownership eliminating need for 3rd party products.

• Minimised platforms, options and configurations improving manageability and supportability.

• An 'Enterprise as an Application' approach providing a packaged solution.

Geographical DiversityThe following diagram shows the diversity of geographical locations Ellipse operates within.

Figure 1: Ellipse 8 Operational view

This ability to cater for such a diverse environment has been enhanced by the Ellipse 8 architecture along with the Ellipse 8hosting model, both of which are covered in this document.

Ellipse provides the ability to connect in populated and remote locations using a web browser using an architecture that catersfor low bandwidth networks between users and Ellipse 8.

Ellipse 8 Architectural ViewsEllipse 8 has been designed for ease of use, simplicity of deployment, and performance across both high and low bandwidthenvironments.

The Ellipse architectural views provided in this section graphically represent different points of focus for Ellipse 8.

Architecture View Area of Focus

High Level View Introduces the high level system architecture describing the main systems that make up acustomer's Ellipse 8 architecture

Expanded View Provides further detail on Ellipse 8, the user groups and the Ellipse Integration PlatformPhysical View Discusses the architecture from the perspective of physical hardwareScalability View Outlines how the architecture is designed to scale to meet increased numbers of transactions

and usersAvailability View Outlines how the architecture is placed to support customer requirements for availabilityComponents and KeyProtocols View

Shows the protocols between different making up a typical Ellipse domain

Integration View Shows the components that integrate with Ellipse 8, including the Web ServicesSoftware View Shows the various tools and components making up the core Open Source software that

support Ellipse 8Security View Shows the linked relationship between LDAP authentication and Ellipse authorisation

Table 1: Architecture views

High Level ViewThe high level system architecture describes the main systems that make up a customer's architecture, which includes Ellipse8. This is described around the following architectural concepts:

• Key systems and environments

• Systems Architecture

• Integration

• Administration

• Reporting

Figure 2: Ellipse 8 High Level Architectural View

A customer's overall Ellipse environment encompasses the customer's network, firewalls, end user operating systems, andother enterprise systems.

Key components of this environment are:

• Ellipse 8, including Workplanner, GIS, reporting, application API's.

• The Integration platform for integrating to other key systems especially SAP and Oracle.

• Ellipse 8 users.

• Separated domains for security purposes, especially external to the enterprise and external to the IT systems.

• The various ancillary services such as print, email, fax.

• Other ERP systems such as Oracle and SAP.

• Other In House Systems.

• Various firewalls required for security.

Domains

Domain Description

User The user domain is the environment from which users operate. It includes the user's desktop, LAN, WAN andother services required to support a user community.

IT This domain is typically separated from the main end user environment, with access controlled for securitypurposes. Both physical and domain access can be restricted.All IT systems are typically found here including other ERP and in house systems.

Table 2: High Level View domains

Domain delineation

Domain Description

User to IT domain Access in and out of this domain is controlled through firewalls and often physical security.External to IT Domain Access in and out is controlled through firewalls.

Table 3: Delineation between domains

Expanded ViewThis Ellipse 8 expanded view outlines the key components of Ellipse 8 and the Integration Platform (IP) that supportsintegration.

Figure 3: Ellipse 8 Expanded Architectural View

Ellipse 8Ellipse 8 describes the logical components that make up the Ellipse solution. They do not necessarily describe physicalhardware entities.

Component Description

Application Web Server, Managerand Monitor

Provides the functionality to create Ellipse environments as well as manage usersrequests and monitor activity within the appliance.The basic monitoring software monitors the Ellipse 8 infrastructure for CPU, memoryand disk issues. It is not a replacement for corporate system monitoring solutions.

Ellipse Online The latest release of Ellipse incorporating a 100% Web user interface with a 100% javaruntime environment.

WorkPlanner Is delivered as an embedded part of Ellipse 8.Ellipse Map Server (GeoServer) Is delivered onto the Ellipse 8 Online Server. It provides the Ellipse layers and features

for the map view.Batch Server Batch processing capability for business functions that are asynchronous or time

dependent. For example end of month costing and pay cycles.Web Services Makes Ellipse business functions available as SOA Web Services. That is uses SOA

services / API for accessing Ellipse functionality.Operational reporting Operational reporting components for running day to day operational reports as

distinct from analytics or business intelligence style reports.Host Functions This includes the Host operating system (Oracle EOL), Open Nebula and Gold Images

used to build the virtual environments.

Table 4: Ellipse 8 components

Connect Integration PlatformThe integration platform is a ABB delivered series of components provided for integration purposes. The platform integratesvarious platforms so as to provide services to the applications dependent upon them.

Component Description

Mobile Adaptor The server required to deliver mobile applications and infrastructure, and manage the mobile devicefleet.

ETL Server Provides the Extract Transform and Load services required for provision of Star Schemas for businessintelligence purposes.

Service Bus An enterprise service bus is provided for various integration scenarios, including integration to SAP orOracle as well as customer integration scenarios.

PredefinedIntegration

Provides Adaptors for the SAP and Oracle ERP integration.

Table 5: Integration platform components

Other ABB Applications

System Description

LinkOne LinkOne is a graphical content delivery solution that provides correct and timely part information to alarge and geographically dispersed network.A LinkOne user can access LinkOne content in 3 ways:

1. LinkOne WebView

2. LinkOne WinView as standalone solutions

3. LinkOne as integrated into Ellipse business process.Mobile This is a mobile business application that provides mobile workers with direct access to critical

information for both planned and unplanned work. It guides them through a standardized workflowthat's relevant to the specific job and designed around their unique way of working in the field.

Table 6: Other ABB Applications

Ancillary, Security and Data

System Description

Print Ellipse requires access to print devices that support the IPP printing protocol. Customers who do nothave printers that are IPP capable can implement a server with IPP functionality such as WindowsServer 2003 or 2008.

Email Ellipse requires the use of Email services for notification services such as business processmanagement, report distribution, and external communication for various business functions.

Fax Ellipse drops files in a fax file directory that can be processed by a customer's fax software.Security Ellipse requires the use of an LDAP server to authenticate users.Database Typically customers provide database servers for deployment of the databases required for Ellipse, ERP

and in house systems. The Ellipse database is deployed to either a common/shared infrastructure or adedicated environment.

Data Warehouse Customers can access business reporting by taking advantage of data warehousing and the data martdesign which conforms to star schema methodology and which can be implemented "out-of-the-box" tosupport common analytical requirements.

Table 7: Ancillary, Security and Data components

Other Systems

System Description

SAP Ellipse can take advantage of pre-defined adaptors to integrate with SAP systems such as Finance andHR. This is provided through the Integration Platform.

Oracle Ellipse takes advantage of pre-defined adaptors to integrate with Oracle systems such as Finance andHR. This is provided through the Integration Platform.

In House Systems Ellipse can be integrated with other in house systems utilising Ellipse Enterprise services and theIntegration Platform.

Table 8: Other Systems components

Users

Users Description

General This group uses various Ellipse EAM functions.Planners Maintenance Planners, for example, predominantly use Workplanner.Administrator Application administrators responsible for Ellipse settings, ensuring batch processes run and in general

are required to manage the day to day aspects of Ellipse.Office Tools Power users who require access to Ellipse data in forms such as spreadsheets, MS project and forms

other than the standard user interface.Other ERP Users of the other ERP systems who from time to time also access the Ellipse system.In house systems Users of other in house systems who from time to time also access the Ellipse system.

Table 9: Users of Ellipse 8

Infrastructure Administrators

Administrator Description

Ancillary Systems Administration roles are required to manage print servers, file servers, networks, email and otheradministration systems.

Operating system Administration roles are required to manage the environment and any change to the underlyingoperating systems within the environments.

SecurityAdministrators

Administration roles are required to manage among other things user accounts and passwords. LDAP isused to authenticate user access to Ellipse 8.

DatabaseAdministrator

Administration roles are required to manage performance; and the backup and recovery of thedatabase.

Ellipse TechnicalAdministrators

Administration roles are responsible for the technical aspects of running an Ellipse System, includinginstallation and patching, system outages, diagnostic capture, deployment scenarios, printers, emailingand interfacing to other systems.

IntegrationPlatform

Administration roles are required to manage the operations, including deployment of adapters,management of messages and installation and configuration of the platform.

Other Systems,ERP Systems

Administration roles are required to manage the other in house systems or other ERPs within anorganisation.

Table 10: Administrators associated with the Ellipse 8 environment

Deployment ViewEllipse 8 can be deployed in three primary ways today, in order of preference, the reasons for which will be explored below:

1. Ellipse Virtual Appliance on Azure - An Ellipse Appliance (see next) on Azure cloud infrastructure, accessibility via publicinternet and or private VPN.

2. Ellipse Appliance - Certified hardware, asset management in a box, all networking, storage management, upgrades,security patching managed automatically for you.

3. Traditional Manual deployment - hardware (and or virtual servers), networking, storage management, upgrades, securitypatching, all your processes to define and manage.

This Guide, when discussing the Architecture views, refers to primary focus on the

Physical viewThe Ellipse physical view is not relevant to clod based deployment such as with Azure. The physical view continues to berelevant to both Appliance and primary view for the Ellipse architecture. The design is based around the use of commodity Intelhardware configured to support a standard operating environment. The architecture makes it simple to scale the mostimportant workloads and offer high availability, inherent in the architecture design.

In addition to hardware for the Appliance itself there needs to be network cards to support the network bonding featuresprovided to further increase availability through redundancy of components. Optionally, SAN can also be allocated to allowvolume groups to be moved from local disk within the Appliance to external SAN subsystem(s).

Separate hardware is required for the database and hardware load balancer (where required).

Figure 4: Physical components required for ELLIPSE

The Ellipse 8 production is comprised of 2 or more identical physical servers supporting the key systems that make up theEllipse 8 operating environment.

Figure 5: Ellipse 8 Physical view

Object Description

IT Domain Depending on the Ellipse 8 hosting option selected for a deployment, the IT domain may be whollyunder the control of customers or in the case of a Managed Services offering, wholly or partly undercontrol and management by ABB and or the customer.

Appliance Server The Appliance server is an Intel server that runs Oracle Linux as the operating system. There is a stricthardware compatibility list for running Oracle Linux and customers should check with ABB prior tohardware acquisition.

Ellipse 8 OnlineServer(s)

The Ellipse 8 Online servers are responsible for delivering the Ellipse application to the usercommunity. Ellipse 8 'production' is deployed with a minimum of two Online application servers toprovide a level of high availability for users.

Ellipse 8 BatchServer

The Ellipse 8 batch server is responsible for executing background or long running jobs such as Payroll,financial posting and other time dependent business processes. It is deployed on its own applicationserver to provide performance isolation from other application servers in the appliance.

Web ServicesServer

The Ellipse 8 Web Services server provides a web services interface into the Ellipse application. It isdeployed on its own application server to provide performance isolation from other application serversin the appliance.

Connect The integration platform.ETL Server Provides Extract Transform and Load services.

Database Servers The Database servers are separate physical servers required for the deployment of the Ellipse 8database and data warehouse.

Ellipse Database The Ellipse Database, is defined in its own database instance on the Database Server, and stores theday-to-day transactional and operational data maintained by the Ellipse Online and Batch components.

Ellipse Data Warehouse | The Ellipse Data Warehouse contains the star schemas to support the businessintelligence and analytical reporting solution the

customer chooses to implement.

Table 11 - Physical View

Virtual Appliance OverviewThe Ellipse 8 architecture has been designed to scale with simplicity in mind and allows system components to be sized, tunedand configured identically when deployed via the Virtual Ellipse Appliance, now available in Microsoft Azure Cloud.

ABB provide non-Appliance installations with recommendations regarding the allocation of configurations of system resourcesrequired to run a specific number of users. The system resources are:

• Number and specification of CPUs

• Amount of Physical memoryABB benchmarks Ellipse and other applications regular to determine the system resources required support known concurrentuser workloads. ABB recommends horizontal scaling rather than vertical scaling in general and where the application itselfsupports horizontal scaling . Horizontal scaling is preferred because customers can support more users by deploying more"copies". Customers do not need to tune or size scalable units on any Ellipse appliance. Virtual machine provisioning of Ellipseand other products under Appliance deployment models are controlled by ABB.

NoteMost Ellipse customers will not need to scale beyond a standard single Ellipse physical appliance. Virtual Appliances scaletheir systems as required and generally using standard cloud scaling mechanisms and controls.

Azure resources for EllipseAn Ellipse 8 Virtual Appliance provides pre-configured environment types that define all the necessary components required toset up and run versioned instances of Ellipse 8.

The following tables are an indicative guide as to how CPU, memory and disk are allocated for each of the components in eachtype of Ellipse environment. The tables indicate the allocated CPUs, Memory and Disk, as well as individual instances of eachcomponent.

Resource Planning:It is possible to over commit on CPU ONLY. That is, if the machine has 48 virtual cores (24 physical CPU cores hyper-threaded tocreate 48 virtual cores), and the total CPU count required is 60, this configuration is still valid. Excessive over-commitmenthowever will create a bottle-neck at the CPU level and is not recommended for production systems.

ABB does NOT recommended over committing in relation to Memory or Disk minimum requirements. That is, if the total diskrequirement is 120Gb, and only 118Gb is available, this will create a system that is unstable. For memory, if the Applianceserver has 128Gb memory and the total requirement for deployment environments is leave less than 8Gb for the host OS andservices then the system is likely to unstable.

NoteABB changes the following specifications to meet changes in the application demands, and as a result of workloadsexperienced by customers from benchmarks. These changes may include (but are not limited to) increases in CPU, Memoryand disk requirements. It is advised, that when designing and planning a new Ellipse configuration, that spare capacity isavailable to handle any potential increases in CPU and memory requirements; for example 3 Gb memory.

Environment Types:This section contains the environment resource requirements associated with the Ellipse Appliance Manager environment typesthat are typically created. Different environment types are provide to cater for the most common combinations of server typeslikely to be deployed in support of non-production activities like development, sandboxing, training and testing. Theenvironment type variants are most commonly selected to limit resource usage as the number of environments increases. Forexample, ABB provides an environment type, "DEV-OLTP-BATCH", that enables customers to deploy only one online and onebatch instance, without an integration server or ETL server. This environment type is particularly useful to project teams thatwant their own environment for testing, isolated from other teams activities and configuration changes. Such a requirementcan usually be handled in a matter of minutes using Appliance technology which is rarely the case for manual install or DIYstyle implementations.

Environment type Recommended for...Online

TP BatchWeb

ServicesIntegration ETL

DEV-ALL Light load, development and sandboxusage, all server types

yes yes yes yes yes

DEV-OLTP-BATCH-IP Like DEV-ALL but without EWS and ETLserver types. Web Services still available onOnline and Batch servers via direct URL.

yes yes yes yes no

DEV-OLTP-BATCH Like DEV-ALL but without EWS andIntegration and ETL server types. WebServices still available on Online and Batchservers via direct URL

yes yes yes no no

TST-FULL Provided for moderate load, functionaltesting and training development typeusage. Type is NOT intended to be a"pre-production" instance as it does notdeploy horizontally scaled application serverinstances. Resource provisioning (cpu andmemory) same as PROD-* types

yes yes yes yes yes

PRD-SML Provided for moderate load productionusage. Multiple Online servers horizontallyscaling with automatic Apache load balancerconfiguration.

yes yes yes yes yes

PRD-SML-GEO Similar to PRD-SML but with extra resourcesprovisioned to cater for high GIS demand.

yes yes yes yes yes

PRD-LARGE Provided for moderate to heavy productionusage. This is the standard environmenttype for production systems.

yes yes yes yes yes

PRD-LARGE-GEO Similar to PRD-LARGE but with extraresources provisioned to cater for high GISdemand.

yes yes yes yes yes

As the above table shows, ABB provides a limited number of environment types that enable customers to deploy only theOnline and Batch instances, without an Integration server or, Ellipse Web Services servicer or ETL server. This is particularlyuseful to project teams that need their own environment for testing.

Manual or "Do-It-Yourself" style deployments can use the tales below to size the server infrastructure they assumeresponsibility for creating and maintaining.

DEV-ALL - Development Environment:Recommended users: 50

This environment type is recommended for light load testing, development and "sandbox" type usage. By default, it providesone of each type of server that may be deployed in support of an Ellipse logical environment.

Server Type CPUs/Server Memory/Server Disk/ServerServer

Instances CPUs/Env.Memory

/Env. Disk/Env

Ellipse Online 2 12 16 1 2 12 16Batch 2 12 16 1 2 12 16Ellipse WebServices

2 12 16 1 2 12 16

Integration Platform 2 12 16 1 2 12 16ETL Server 1 4 16 1 1 4 16Totals 9 52 80

Notea. Disk and Memory Figures are quoted in GB.

b. Disk Space requirement does not include the Ellipse File System storage (EFS) used for logs, generated batch outputand temporary working files.

TST-FULL - Test Environment:Recommended users: 100

This environment is provided for moderate load, functional testing and training development type usage. It is NOT intended tobe a "pre-production" instance as it does not deploy horizontally scaled application server instances. Resource provisioning(cpu and memory) for servers deployed under this environment type are equivalent to the levels of resourcing for productionenvironment types/deployments.

Server Type CPUs/ServerMemory/Server Disk/ServerServer


/Env. Disk/Env

Ellipse Online 4 12 16 1 4 12 16Batch 4 12 16 1 4 12 16Ellipse Web Services 4 12 16 1 4 12 16Integration Platform 2 12 16 1 2 12 16ETL Server 1 4 16 1 1 4 16

Totals 15 52 80



PRD-SML - Production Environment - SmallRecommended users: 100

This environment type is provided for moderate load production usage. Most importantly, multiple Ellipse Online applicationserver instances are deployed automatcially, includingload balancer and other service reconfigurations.



/Env. Disk/Env

Ellipse Online 4 12 16 2 8 24 32Batch 6 16 16 1 6 16 16Ellipse Web Services 4 12 16 1 4 12 16Integration Platform 2 12 16 1 2 12 16ETL Server 1 4 16 1 1 4 16

Totals 21 68 96



c. Ellipse Batch does not currently scale horizontally. Scaling to meet increase batch workload is handled by anadditional environment type which ensures deployment of a large batch server instance for the environment.

PRD-LARGE - Production Environment - LargeRecommended users: 500 (per environment), 250 per Ellipse Online server + redundant Online server as "hot/active" capacity

This environment type is provided for moderate to heavy production usage.



/Env. Disk/Env

Host 2 8 16 1 2 8 16Command / Apache 2 8 16 1 2 8 16

Base Totals 2 16 32Ellipse Online 4 12 16 3 12 36 48Batch 12 24 16 1 12 24 16Ellipse Web Services 8 12 16 1 8 12 16Integration Platform 4 12 16 1 4 12 16ETL Server 1 4 16 1 1 4 16

156 Environ. Totals 37 88 112



c. Ellipse Batch does not currently scale horizontally. Scaling to meet increase batch workload is handled by anadditional environment type which ensures deployment of a large batch server instance for the environment.

ABB Appliance HardwareThe ABB Ellipse Appliance runs Oracle Linux and is built to run on commodity Intel hardware. Whilst ABB has great confidencein the general process of building an Appliance from scratch, a largely automated procedure, new vendor hardware continuesto test the limits of existing operating systems. Hardware compatibility may be an issue for some customers considering somemakes or models. To help customers, ABB maintains a list of certified hardware (via the Ellipse and Related Products SupportedPlatforms Guide) that ABB has identified as having completed a range of base capabilities, tested and therefore supportable.The list of certified hardware is sometimes maintained as a result of ABB's own testing but most commonly from working withcustomers to complete a basic certification activity.

There are two recommended configurations for the hardware used for an Ellipse Appliance. The Appliance is then used tocreate Ellipse environment instances based on a selection of one of the available Ellipse environment types.

The combination of physical hardware and deployed environment type instances determines how many environments can becreated on a given Ellipse appliance.

ABB recommended customers do NOT mix production and non-production environment types on the same Appliance.

NoteIt is recommended that only one Production environment be created on any one appliance.

Figure 6: Appliance and environments

The above diagram indicates that the hardware has the host environment installed, along with the Appliance Manager, whichhas created three separate environments, for example Dev, Test and Train.

The following describes the three hardware configurations (standard, small and micro) that can be initialised as an EllipseAppliance.

The Standard Appliance is recommended for a production environment or a number of non-production environments.

The Small Appliance is recommended for smaller sites, usually under 150 users and is capable of running one compactnon-production or one compact production environment.

The Micro Appliance is recommended for very small sites, usually under 50 users.

Customers are strongly encouraged to evaluate the cost advantage of servers with larger numbers of cores, noting that a 40core machine does not imply a doubling of price as compared to a 20 core machine.

ABB provides customers with a process, defined in the Supported Platforms Guide, for working with ABB to certify Ellipse onhardware that is not on our current list of hardware known to successfully operate as a ABB Ellipse Appliance. Certification ofhardware is an important step to ensuring predictability of the operation of the proposed Appliance hardware and to ensurethat customers experience the seamless experience ABB expects.

Standard ApplianceThe table below describes the hardware requirements of a typical Ellipse production system supporting up to 500 concurrentusers, using a "Standard" Appliance:

Chipset Intel(c) Xeon(c) "E" series or laterCores (CPU) 40 (Recommended) 32 (Minimum for "Standard" Appliance)RAM (GB) (minimum) 256 (Non-production, required to support multiple environments) 128 (Production)Reference Hardware Refer to the Ellipse and Related Products Supported Platforms Guide

Table 12: Ellipse Appliance - Typical Site

ABB provisions spare RAM capacity in each Appliance to cater for (a) changes in the resource consumption profile of Ellipse andother components and (b) demands that non-production mode scalable unit configurations can impose as customers exploit therapid commissioning and decommissioning functionality provided by the architecture and deployment model in the context of atypical implementation project. The level of spare RAM capacity available in each scalable appliance is reviewed by ABBperiodically and adjusted in accordance with support observations and feedback from the field.

Small ApplianceThe table below describes the hardware requirements of a small Ellipse production site, supporting up to 150 concurrent userson a full featured "Small" Appliance.

Chipset Intel(c) Xeon(c) "E" series or laterCores (CPU) 24RAM (GB) 128Reference Hardware Refer to the Ellipse and Related Products Supported Platforms Guide

Table 13: Ellipse Appliance - Small Site

Smaller servers are sometimes deployed for test environments to facilitate the smaller load.

Micro ApplianceThe table below describes the hardware requirements of a full featured "Micro" Appliance sized to handle very small Ellipseproduction sites of up to 50 concurrent users.

Chipset Intel(c) Xeon(c) "E" series or laterCores (CPU) 16RAM (GB) 64Reference Hardware Refer to the Ellipse and Related Products Supported Platforms Guide

Table 13: Ellipse Appliance - Micro Appliance Site

Smaller servers are sometimes deployed for test environments to facilitate the smaller load.

Scalability viewEllipse 8 has components that can be scaled to suit the number of required concurrent users. ABB classify this as horizontalscaling.

Figure 7: Ellipse 8 Scalability Architecture

Each appliance server can have the components shown in the physical view (Figure 5: Ellipse 8 ).

Scalable unit components Description

Appliance Server An Appliance Intel Server with enough capacity to support the horizontal scaling of thecomponents within.This is the unit that is scalable through being replicated to support the number ofconcurrent users required for the customer's installation. The appliance is deployed withall of the components that make it scalable. This includes:

• Ellipse 8 Online Application Server

• Ellipse 8 Batch Application Server

• ETL Platform

• Web Services Server

• Connect - Integration Platform

• Application Web Server, Manager and Monitor Ellipse 8 Web Services ServerEllipse 8 Database Server All of the Scalable Units connect to the Ellipse 8 database server.Ellipse 8 Data WarehouseServer

The Ellipse 8 Data Warehouse is connected to the Ellipse 8 Database server via the ETLserver.

Table 14: Scalability view description

NoteThe database is scaled through addition of CPU and memory

Availability viewThe Ellipse Virtual Appliance utilises Azure Load Balancing technologies to provide a highly available Ellipse service endpoint.

The Ellipse Virtual Appliance uses both Azure external / public Load Balancers (ALB) and Azure Internal Load Balancers (ILB). AnALB instance is created.

Every Cloud Service gets a free public load balanced IP (VIP). If you want to load balance on multiple VIPs, you can getadditional VIPs at a nominal charge as outlined here.

You can assign up to 5 additional IPs to your Load Balancer.

Internal load balancingLoad balancing between virtual machines that reside inside of a virtual network (Internal Load Balancing) is free of charge.Adding additional VIPs to the Internal Load Balancer is currently not supported.

High AvailabilityA high availability configuration based on Appliance (or any other non-cloud deployment topology) requires at least two(2)physical appliances. In the event of hardware failure impacting one Appliance, the "scalable unit", then another exists capableof servicing the workload. The use of cheap commodity hardware to provide the redunancy is key to the architecture'sflexibility.

Figure 8: Ellipse 8 Availability View

In the diagram above, the connections shown with broken/dashed lines indicate optional relationships that would be broughtinto play in support of a disaster recovery (DR) configuration requirement. ABB, through its professional servicesorganisation,can assist customers with disaster recovery configurations.

Server Type Description

Load Balancer The use of load balancers is required in high availability configurations (multipleappliances) and in support of disaster recovery requirements. The load balancer performsa number of important functions including, but not limited to, distribution of inboundrequest processing, SSL termination, compression handling, client redirection to supportclient-side component upgrades.

Appliance Server At least two Appliances are installed for each customer production instance. BothAppliances are assumed to be active (hot) rather than passive (cold). Availability isachieved through redundancy of components.Within an Appliance there is:

1. Hardware resources to deliver the required workload for the number of concurrentusers for the system. That is for a 500 concurrent user site the Appliance is sized tosupport 500 concurrent users.

2. Within each environment created all Ellipse components are deployed.

3. Within a specific data centre a second Appliance supports the entire workload shoulda complete machine outage occur.

4. The Appliances are replicated across data centres and in the event of a data centredisaster users will use the replicated Appliances.

Database Availability Customers should decide the level of outage or data loss that is tolerable and chose adatabase and SAN replication strategy that matches this requirement and budget.Customers can chose Oracle Enterprise Edition to utilise database log replication, a thirdparty log replication strategy or implement home grown log replication tools as required.ABB supports Oracle SE1 through to Oracle Enterprise Edition, and the choice of disasterrecovery management is left to the customer.

Table 15: Availability view description

Disaster RecoveryThis is a separate concept to Availability and is achieved through multi site deployment of scalable units. In addition to thescalable units the following is required:

• Database logs need to be replicated using:

• Distributed SAN

• Oracle Enterprise Log Replication (Data Guard)

• Standard Edition Oracle + Log shipping with small window of loss of data.• A cost benefit analysis is recommended to determine the best DR approach

Backup and RecoveryWhile the Ellipse servers can be rebuilt the data needs to be managed so that it can be preserved. For this:

• The Ellipse database requires backing up using standard Oracle backup and recovery tools and techniques

• The file systems that Ellipse is configured to use must also be backed up using standard techniquesWhile the Ellipse application servers are designed:

• so that they do not need backing up

• to be rebuilt using the standard deployment processThere is still a requirement that all volatile data is located on SAN connected storage and this data must be backed up.

Components and Key Network Protocols ViewThis communications view describes the protocols between the various layers and external to the system.

Figure 9: Components and Key Network Protocols

Object Description

Application Web Server,Manager and Monitor

There are three application servers within the VM.

1. The VEAM (Enterprise Appliance Manager) that manages Ellipse environmentcreation, deletion and upgrading.

2. The HTTP server provides functions such as load balancing, cache configuration, andcompression directives.

3. A monitoring server to monitor the various health states of the deployedenvironment.

Ellipse 8 The Ellipse 8 application servers come in two variants:

1. One or many servers to deliver Ellipse Online transaction functionality to users

2. One server to deliver Ellipse background or batch process capability.

Ellipse 8 Web Services The Ellipse 8 Web Services server provides Elipse functionality via Web Services, a specificand agreed standard for the invocation of Enterprise web services.

Connect The Integration platform provides enterprise service bus capability through which ABBprovides pre-defined integration to SAP and Oracle E-business applications.

ETL Server An ETL server is part of the Integration Platform. This server is responsible for running theETL jobs for transforming Ellipse 8 data into the Ellipse 8 datamart star schemas.

LinkOne Server LinkOne is a graphical content delivery solution that provides correct and timely partinformation to a large and geographically dispersed network.A LinkOne user can access LinkOne content in 3 ways:

1. LinkOne WebView

2. LinkOne WinView as standalone solutions

3. LinkOne as integrated into Ellipse business process.Mobile This is a mobile business application that provides mobile workers with direct access to

critical information for both planned and unplanned work. It guides them through astandardized workflow that's relevant to the specific job and designed around their uniqueway of working in the field.

Other ERP/Inhouse Ellipse can take advantage of pre-defined adaptors to integrate with SAP systems such asFinance and HR. This is provided through the Integration Platform.Ellipse takes advantage of pre-defined adaptors to integrate with Oracle systems such asFinance and HR. This is provided through the Integration Platform.Ellipse can be integrated with other in house systems utilising Ellipse Enterprise servicesand the Integration Platform.

IPP enabled Printers Ellipse requires access to print devices that support the IPP printing protocol. Customerswho do not have printers that are IPP capable can implement a server with IPPfunctionality such as Windows Server 2003 or 2008.

Fax Gateway Ellipse drops files in a fax file directory that can be processed by a customer's faxsoftware.

Email Ellipse requires the use of Email services for notification services such as business processmanagement, report distribution, and external communication for various businessfunctions.

Ellipse File System The Ellipse File system is housed in a SAN environment.LDAP Ellipse requires the use of an LDAP server to authenticate users.Database The Ellipse 8 data is contained in an Oracle database.Datamarts The Ellipse 8 datamart database contains the star schemas loaded from Ellipse data

through the ETL server.Ellipse Map Server(GeoServer)

Ellipse 8 connects to the Geospatial server to provide an alternative access to GISfeatures, referred to as providing the Ellipse map layers or Ellipse features to a map layer.

Base Map Server This provides the base map layers for any Map tab view.GIS Map Server Customers can directly access GIS capability from their own or other GIS servers. This

provides the Non Ellipse GIS feature layers.

Table 16: Ellipse 8 Components

Key network protocols

From To Description Protocol

All Web users Ellipse HTTPServer

All users will access Ellipse through the Ellipse HTTP server mostcommonly via a secure connection.

HTTPS

Ellipse HTTPServer

Ellipse 8 All traffic from the HTTP server goes to the Ellipse application serverswhich hosts the Ellipse business logic and applications.

AJP

ApplianceManagerServer

Selected Servers The Appliance Manager is used to install, upgrade and deleteapplication instances in the process of create and delete VMs.

HTTP

ZenossMonitoring

Selected Servers The Zenoss monitoring server monitors the servers for availability andperformance of the system.

JMX,SNMP,othersystemmonitoringinterfaces

Ellipse 8 LinkOne Ellipse 8 integrates with LinkOne to provide LinkOne book contentwithin the Ellipse business logic.

SOAP /HTTP

ETL Server DatabaseDatamarts

The Ellipse 8 ETL server runs ETL to extract data from the Ellipsedatabase, transforms the data and loads it into the Ellipse 8 starschema on the Ellipse 8 datamarts.

JDBC

ConnectIntegrationPlatform

Ellipse 8 OtherERP

The integration platforms extracts information from Ellipse using anumber of protocols, Web Services, batch files and other mechanismsto orchestrate business processes between Ellipse and other enterprisesystems.The Integration Platform is a core component of the SAP and OracleIntegration.

WebServices,Fileprotocols,JDBC,WFS/WMS,others

All Servers LDAP All servers require a mechanism for authenticating users. Users aremaintained in a user directory service, for example Active Directory.

LDAP / SSL

Ellipse 8 Print The protocol provides access from Ellipse 8 through to customerprinters.

IPP

Ellipse 8 Email Ellipse 8 emails reports and workflow items, require connectivity to anemail server.

SMTP

Ellipse 8 Ellipse Map Server Allows Ellipse to link Assets to Locations WFSEllipse MapServer

Database The Ellipse Map Server accesses Ellipse GIS views JDBC

Users Ellipse 8(EnterpriseServices)

The Ellipse API is accessible through web services and customers canperform integration to:

1. Microsoft Office products,

2. Other systems through the Integration platform and;

3. API for bespoke java or .Net applications

Ellipse WebServicesSOAP /HTTP

Ellipse 8 Messaging Server Ellipse can be configured to produce Ellipse Events which are JMSbased message which describe specific business events as they occurwithin the regular online, batch or EWS transaction occurring in thesystem at any given time.

JMS

Table 17: Key Network Protocols

Integration ViewsThis section provides information on Ellipse 8 integration, covering views on:

• Web Services

• ETL

• GIS

• LinkOne

• Mobile

• Pre-defined integration

Figure 10: Overall integration view

NotePlease refer to your ABB Account Manager for further details on these products.

Web Services

What functionality is provided?Ellipse Web Services (EWS) make Ellipse business functions available as SOA Web Services. The WSDL (Web Services DefinitionLanguage) configuration file for EWS is delivered as part of the package. WSDL is the standard form of specification anddelivery for SOA Web Services interfaces.

ABB recommended implementation of SSL for Ellipse. Customer are free to choose a non-secure version with acknowledgementof some basic risks associated with HTTP based Ellipse deployments.

How do you access the functionality?

Authentication To access EWS a valid Ellipse user account and password is required.If the user authentication service is not called or it is not successfully completed, requests to otherenterprise services from the same connection will be rejected.

Authorisation Authorisation of access to the Ellipse business functions within the web services uses the standard Ellipseauthorisation mechanisms.

Ellipse Web Services WSDL are accessible via a URL of the form:

<servertype><servertypecount>-<env>.<appliancehostname>.<domain>

For example:

ews01-el8dev.appliance.company.com| | | | || | | | +-- domain "company.com"| | | +-- appliand host name "appliance"| | +-- environment "el8dev"| +-- servertypecount "01"+-- servertype "ews"

How is it used?Microsoft web services clients implement web services differently to other clients as such a Microsoft specific version of theEllipse WSDL is required to access Ellipse services from Microsoft products. Sample Excel spread sheets are delivered withVWS. Ellipse web services are delivered as a core part of Ellipse, however their use for interfacing and integration purposesmust be separately licensed.

For older versions of Microsoft office products the Microsoft Web Services Toolkit must be installed on the user's machinedesktop in order to make the web services capabilities available to VB macros in Microsoft Office documents.

NoteThe Microsoft Web Services Toolkit is no longer supported by Microsoft but it is still available for use. For current Microsoftoffice products Microsoft require a copy of Visual Studio to develop applications using Web Services. Consult the Microsoftproduct guides for more details.

The logical architecture of the Web Service interface is shown in the following diagram.

Figure 11: Logical Architecture of Web Services integration

ETL viewETL provides the tools and environment to build and execute data integration tasks from which customers can performBusiness Intelligence type analytical reporting.

Figure 12: Extract, transform and load (ETL) view

What functionality is provided?Data Integration tasks connect to the Ellipse database and extract, transfer and load the data into the star schema designeddatamart tables.

How do you access the functionality?The jobs and transformations designed through the Pentaho GUI are executed in Ellipse batch on a periodic basis, to update thedatamarts, with changes from the Ellipse database.

How is it used?The datamarts are a generic way of delivering the Ellipse 8 data, so that the data can accessed through the customerscorporate reporting solution. For example: Cognos, Business Objects, CorVu, or Hyperion.

Spatially enabled applicationsThe location of Ellipse managed assets like workorders or equipment can be managed using Ellipse 8's spatially awareapplications.

The GIS design and implementation is a natural extension to Ellipse, both architecturally and functionally.

At an architectural level the underlying software is an extension to the open source tools approach to developing Ellipse 8.

The storage tier uses:

• Oracle's geometry data types to store the location of Ellipse entities. This allows Ellipse to incorporate spatially awarequeries.

• Through the use of the Open GIS standards Ellipse 8 exposes Ellipse entities through the Web Feature Set or WFSstandard. This allows Ellipse 8 entities to be viewed in other Geospatial systems without the complexity and expense ofreplicating data to other systems or writing applications on top of geospatial systems.

The functional implementation provides a continuation of the user experience into a GIS environment.

Figure 13: GIS view

What functionality is provided?This is built for the asset manager within an organisation.

The equipment location is displayed as a layer on an embedded map within Ellipse. The standard layers are Equipment, MST,Work Requests and Work Orders.

Ellipse manages the creation of workorder, work requires and MST's and the relationship to equipment and as such theseentities can inherit the geospatial information of the Ellipse Equipment entity.

How do you access the functionality?The GIS functionality is accessed through the relevant Ellipse screens with GIS extensions within these applications.

How is it used?At a Functional level it extends the presentation of information in Ellipse 8 from data to a geospatial display.

The base map can provide a range of features that support positioning of the assets/equipment on the map. There can bemultiple base maps, for example street references, shorelines, rivers and other such maps.

Map Panel Connections

Figure 14: GIS Map Panel connections

Object Description

EllipseMap The geospatial connection to the location of Ellipse located entitiesBaseMap The geospatial connection to the customer's GIS base map or another base map service such as

OpenStreetMapGISMap A geospatial connection to the customer's GIS asset locations or other GIS dataset.

For customers without a GIS systemCustomers access maps that display the Ellipse equipment as features. This is by using the GeoServer in conjunction with theGIS Base Map server, an open source base map (OpenStreetMap).

In this case the GeoServer to provide functionality that:

• Displays the base map according to parameters supplied

• Organises the equipment into predefined (or defined) layers that can be viewed singly or in combination

• Display equipment using the Geospatial locations held in Ellipse 8

For customers with an existing GIS systemCustomers access maps that display the Ellipse equipment as features as well as selected Customer GIS features. This is byusing the GeoServer in conjunction with the Customer GIS and base map, or the GIS Base Map server.

In this case the GeoServer provides functionality that:

• Displays the Customer GIS base map (or Ellipse base map if configured)

• Organises the Ellipse equipment into predefined (or defined) layers that can be viewed singly or in combination

• Display Ellipse equipment using the Geospatial locations held in Ellipse 8

• Displays selected Customer GIS features, using the Geospatial locations held in the customers GIS system

• Allows the customer to view Equipment displayed on the maps either through Ellipse 8 or through the customer's GISsystem.

NoteThe GIS adaptor is a set of open standard interfaces that is used to facilitate requests between Ellipse and the CustomerGIS.

LinkOne WebViewLinkOne is a graphical content delivery solution that provides correct and timely part information to a large and geographicallydispersed network.

LinkOne provides the following capability

• ability to publish graphical content as LinkOne Books

• the ability to view LinkOne content offline via the LinkOne Winview application

• the ability to host and view LinkOne content through the LinkOne Webview software.LinkOne has been tightly integrated into Ellipse 8 and is an integral part of key business processes within Ellipse.

Figure 15: LinkOne WebView

NoteLinkOne WebView is outside of the Ellipse virtualised environment. Refer to your consultant for LinkOne WebViewdocumentation.

What functionality is provided?The LinkOne/Ellipse 8 integration provides Ellipse 8 users' access to LinkOne.

How do you access the functionality?Once configured by the system administrator, access to the LinkOne content is through MSELNK or through imbedded linksbetween selected pieces of equipment and LinkOne images.

LinkOne is tightly integrated into the requisitioning and purchasing business processes with Ellipse.

How is it used?By utilising the LinkOne Integration, Ellipse 8 users can access graphical parts information for Equipment, supplied by theOriginal Equipment Manufacturer, either by specific equipment links or by browsing the LinkOne Parts Books.

Pre-defined IntegrationThe pre-defined integration refers to integration between Ellipse 8 and other ERP's for example SAP.

Figure 17: Pre-defined integration

What functionality is provided?The Pre-defined Integration provides adaptors between Ellipse 8 and the other ERP applications that a customer may have.

How do you access the functionality?The data integration between Ellipse 8 and the other ERP systems occurs as part of controlled business flow resulting from timetriggers at each integration point. These occur at configurable intervals to match the business process.

The timer initiates the pre-defined functionality that either interrogates the Other ERP (SAP/Oracle) or Ellipse 8 to provide theflow of data according to the business flow from, for example:

• Ellipse 8 to SAP r/3 4.6

• SAP r/3 4.6 to the Ellipse

How is it used?The Connect integration platform provides one set of standard services that integrate to the pre-defined adaptors, which thenpoints to the specific version of the ERP, for example SAP R3/4.6.

Software ViewThe software view introduces the core Open Source tools and components from which Ellipse 8 is built.

Figure 18: Ellipse Logical Software Layers

Logical Layer Description

User interface The user interface layer is where the desktop presentation of Ellipse transactions occurs. It is a browseronly interface andis supported on all major browsers that support Adobe Flash player.

Alternativeinterface

The user has the choice of accessing the Ellipse 8 Online using a desktop environment.Ellipse 8 Air Desktop allows a user to launch Ellipse from the desktop environment without a browser.

ApplicationServer

The application server is the container for all applications. This layer is further broken up into 3 distinctlayers

• Application Business Processes

• Service Layer

• Java objectsThese are described below:Application Business Processes

This layer is where the Ellipse services are composed to produce business applications. It providesthe necessary user interface logic, service sequences and application business logic required todeliver the business processes that make up Ellipse.

Service LayerThe service layer provides the business services required for the various Ellipse business entities.These are used by the Application Business process layer to build applications. These services canalso be access by web services from other clients.

Java ObjectsAt the lowest level of the software layer are the java objects required for the service to completeits business functions. These are low level components for maintaining the database, andcalculating various business or system logic.

Database The database layer spans the database server and application layer. Hibernate is used to abstract theEllipse entities for data persistence. Ellipse uses a relational database to store data. Ellipse supportsOracle.

Security ViewThis security view indicates that Ellipse 8 authorisation follows from LDAP authentication.

Figure 19: Ellipse Security view

As customers implementing Ellipse often utilise common userids and passwords across a number of applications, Ellipsesupports the use of Authentication Services that support the LDAP Protocol (V3 or later) such as Microsoft Active Directory,OpenLDAP and OpenDJ. Configuration and operation of these products is a customer responsibility however ABB support can beengaged once a customer can demonstrate that an LDAP command line utility like "ldapsearch", available on Window or Linux,can successfully bind to the LDAP server and perform searches using the same filters and search parameters as being definedfor use by Ellipse.

Access to Ellipse functionality (authorization) is not help in LDAP bu rather configured by the System Administrator within theapplication.

Ellipse security is broken into two key areas, namely:

User authentication How a user is identified to the Ellipse system.User authorisation What a user has access to once they have been successfully authenticated.

LDAP is used to authenticate Ellipse user access to the system. Once the identity of a user is established, the Ellipse sign onprocess is performed to establish the profile to be used for authorisation purposes.

Ellipse user account only requires that the account name is registered in the LDAP server with a password. The configuration ofLDAP accounts for Ellipse users does not indicate authorisation within Ellipse.

Figure 20: Ellipse 8 Authentication and Authorisation Sequence

Ellipse AuthenticationThe Ellipse authentication is described in detail below.

User Action System Action

The user enters theEllipse URL in abrowser.

The browser forwards the request to the Application Server. The Application Server responds to thebrowser with an authorisation request. This is in the form of a login page.

NoteIf the user tries to login using the unencrypted http protocol, they will be redirected to use SSL.

The Ellipse userenters their Ellipseusername andpassword

The username and password are sent to the LDAP server for determining the user's identity. TheLDAP server validates the user's credentials and responds accordingly.A positive response means that the LDAP server responds to the browser with a SAML assertioncontaining the user attributes.

Table 18: Ellipse 8 Authentication Sequence

Ellipse AuthorisationThe Ellipse authorisation is described in detail below.

User Action System Action

The Ellipse homepage is displayed.

Once the user's identity has been confirmed the Ellipse authorisation proceeds.

• Load the authorisation required to give the user access to the relevant Ellipse resources. This isdetermined using:

• the users district

• the users position

• specific security rights the person has been givenTable 19: Ellipse 8 Authorisation Sequence

NoteOptionally the desktop integration will be available. In this trusted model when you go to the Ellipse URL you will beautomatically authenticated.

Ellipse 8 DeploymentEllipse 8 deployment is simplified through the provision of a tailored scalable environment that has the Ellipse 8 componentsinstalled.

When deploying Ellipse 8 the following should be taken into account:

• It is compatible with cloud delivery platforms and agnostic to the cloud provider.

• It positions Ellipse as a stable scalable Appliance and thereby making it Software As A Services (SaaS) capable.

• Database servers and application servers should be located in data centers that are geographically close on a high speednetwork; ideally in the same datacenter.

• Browsers can be placed all around the world on standard internet based links, for example T1.

• Ellipse has been architected to handle low bandwidth high latency satellite links.

• Ellipse has been specifically designed to reduce traffic between the user and the application server. The client sideapplications employ a range of strategies to limit backend interaction to the extent permitted by a rich internetapplication.

Through the use of scalability and a deployment toolkit Ellipse 8 can be hosted either using ABB's managed services or thecustomer's environment.These hosting options are outlined in the following section.

System and Software RequirementsThe following software is installed and configured automatically by the ABB Ellipse Appliance. Customers under taking a manualor "Do It Yourself" style installation may need to source one or all of the items in the table.

System Component Details Software Licensing

Desktop Operating System Windows XP Service Pack 2 orlater

Commercial (Microsoft)

Browser Internet Explorer or Firefox orChrome Adobe Flash 10 or later

Commercial Or OpenSource Freeware

Office Visual Studio Tools (MSOffice) • Approvals Manager

Outlook Plugin

• Smart Excel Plugin

Microsoft

Server environments Ellipse Online Application Server Oracle Linux 6.6 Open SourceEllipse Batch Application Server Oracle Linux 6.6 Open SourceEllipse Web Services Server Oracle Linux 6.6 Open SourceDatabase Server Oracle 12c Commercial (Oracle

Corporation)ETL Pentaho Open SourceEllipse Map Server GeoServer Open SourceMonitoring Server Zenoss Open SourceLinkOne Server Windows 2008 Server Commercial (Microsoft)Integration Platform Oracle Linux 6.6 Open Source

Security SSL Standard TLS 1.1 (SSL no longersupported)

Open Source

User Directory Active directory OpenLDAPOpenDJ

Commercial Open SourceOpen Source

Access Management OpenAM CommercialReportingInfrastructure

Operational Reports Embedded Jasper Open Source

Messaging Ellipse Online Application ServerEllipse Batch Application ServerEllipse Web Services ServerIntegration Platform

Embedded ActiveMQ EmbeddedActiveMQ Embedded ActiveMQEmbedded ActiveMQ

Open Source Open SourceOpen Source Open Source

Table 20: System and software requirements

NoteEllipse 8.3 requires OL 5.7, Ellipse 8.4 requires OL 6.3, Ellipse 8.5 requires OL6.5 and Ellipse 8.6 requires OL6.6

The Supported Platform Environments document describes the supported versions over time. It can be accessed through yourABB Account Manager.

Oracle Linux (OL) 6.6 DVDCustomers are required to source an Oracle Linux 6.6 installation DVD.

• Customers need to decide whether to purchase Oracle support.

In most cases support beyond that supplied by ABB will never be required, Oracle support would prove necessary insituations where hardware/driver compatibility issues arise that ABB R&D is not able to recreate & therefore resolve.

Oracle releases two kernels for each release of Oracle Linux. The first is a Red Hat Compatible Kernel (identical to RHEL Kernel)and the second is called the "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" also known as "UEK" and includes Oracle specific enhancementsdesign to harden the operating system for production use.

For more information, refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Linux

NoteOnly the UEK kernel is supported by ABB.

Customers who elect to take up a support agreement with Oracle should license for the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel releaseas this is what the ABB Ellipse Appliance is built and tested on.

NoteThere is only a single release download available for each Oracle Linux version. The choice of Which kernel is installed isdetermined during installation, and handled automatically by the ABB Ellipse Appliance.

Hosting Options

Managed ServicesMany customers recognise that managing technology is not one of their core-strengths and they elect to have ABB host andmanage Ellipse systems for them. Under this hosting model, ABB assumes the responsibilities that come with managing Ellipsetechnology infrastructure.

The reasons that customers select the ABB hosting model typically include:

1. Hosted and supported by experts that know the software best

2. Reduced total cost of ownership

3. Improved technology management practices

4. Ability to scale quickly and temporarily in short termThe benefits of this deployment model centre mostly on issues of process maturity and reduced total cost of ownership.

ABB provides a hosted environment for Ellipse 8 as indicated by the diagram.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Linux

Figure 21: ABB hosting solution

Domain Description

User Users access Ellipse 8 through a combination of customer and cloud related firewalls.IT The Ellipse cloud environment is separated from other aspects of the customer's IT environment.Customer IT The customers IT environment is outside of the cloud and all communication from Ellipse 8 to customer

servers and other ERP systems will be through firewalls between the cloud and the customer's environment.

Organisations that recognise the need for a strong technology management partner and who are looking to outsource theirnon-core strengths are the best candidates for the ABB hosting model.

Under this model, customers buy or rent the technology infrastructure required to run the applications, located at ABB ownedand managed data centres. ABB provides layered models of support for the customer and its users.

Customer HostingCustomers can elect to host Ellipse themselves on their own technology infrastructure and assume the responsibilities thatcome with managing an enterprise application. The drivers to selection of this model for hosting include, but are not limited to:

1. More control over all systems and data

2. Corporate data stored / handled internally

3. Reduced security and integration complexity

4. Significant investment already made in hardware and or peopleThe benefits of this deployment model centre mostly on issues of security and control.

The customer provides a hosted environment for Ellipse 8 as indicated by the diagram.

Figure 22: Customer hosting solution

Domain Description

User Users access Ellipse 8 through a combination of customer related firewalls.Customer IT The customers IT environment contains Ellipse 8 as part of their overall ICT environment.

Customer hosting differs from ABB hosting in that:

1. the physical hardware is typically located in customer owned, managed or outsourced data centres instead of ABB ownedand managed facilities

2. the customer network and system are completely closed to the outside world

3. the customer does all the work of keeping systems up-to-date, working, backed up and performing well

4. issues of systems availability and service quality can be managed internallyOrganisations with a strong history of technology adoption and management usually like to host applications and itscorresponding infrastructure themselves. These organisations typically implement sophisticated integration suites over timeand the complexity and frustration of dealing with external parties is often see as slowing progress because of the formalprocesses and governance controls implemented by managed service providers.

Bandwidth RequirementsBandwidth requirements of Ellipse 8 are needed to give indicative requirements for sizing and designing networks fordeployment of Ellipse 8. Prediction of bandwidth required is difficult and varies depending on many factors. This sectionoutlines some of the bandwidth considerations and attempts to provide a rule of thumb for calculating required bandwidth fordeploying ellipse.

NoteThe bandwidth calculations used here deal with bandwidth usage measured during internal benchmarks conducted onEllipse 8 using an artificial but representative workload mix of transactions. Actual customer usage of Ellipse will of coursevary to that used in the benchmark and so result are likely to be different. ABB experience suggests that results which aresignificantly different usually poing to an underlying problem with the deployment or design of the implementation.

Bandwidth ConsiderationsMany things need to be considered when estimating bandwidth requirements to achieve good performance of Ellipse. Thefollowing is a list of considerations that will affect bandwidth and response time.

Consideration Description

Network Topology The network design needs to be considered, such as local area versus wide area versussatellite, bandwidth capability, frame relay networks, satellite networks.Examples are:

• Transactions over a satellite will be impacted by the satellite latency for each message.

• The Ethernet is normally best at below 30% utilisation.Transaction Mix The type of transaction and the way the transaction is processed impacts bandwidth utilisation.

If a large proportion of them are very complex screens or transactions then bandwidthrequirements will be different.

Table 21: Considerations that will affect bandwidth and response time

Bandwidth CalculationsABB benchmarks Ellipse 8 through the building and playback of an artificially but representative mix of business transactions.While the simulation is playing, all the systems responsible for delivering Ellipse 8 services are measured and recorded.Detailed and summary reports are prepared and compared to previous benchmarks so that ABB can quantitatively measure theimpact of design and configuration changes to Ellipse 8 over time.

An Ellipse 8 benchmark run typically assumes a 45 second user think time.

NoteThink times directly impact request rate so it is important to understand this when comparing calculations using other ratesof request generation entry as this will vary the calculations.

ABB publishes a metric for calculating bandwidth requirements of bytes per user per second. By knowing this metric and thenumber of users utilising a specific link it is possible to size the specific network.

ABB's network requirements are: Bytes per User per Second = 500

Support considerations

MonitoringEllipse 8 provides several basic monitoring capabilities to help monitor the Appliance and ultimately Ellipse 8 systemperformance.

Figure 23: Monitoring solution

Out of the box, the Ellipse 8 Appliance configures a Zenoss server and monitoring infrastructure that aims to capture andrecord, current and historical performance metrics relating to:

• System performance

• CPU utilisation/demand

• Memory utilisation/demand

• Network utilisation/demand

ABB includes the Zenoss components on the Appliance in order to provide customers with a basic, ready-to-go,ready-to-be-extended, monitoring solution for Ellipse 8. Many customers will already have their own enterprise monitoringcapability and will instead prefer to integrate the Appliance and its deployed systems within their existing monitoringframework. The Ellipse 8 Appliance is configured to broadcast SNMP data for this purpose. Whether through consulting servicesor through simple in-house initiative and ingenuity, customers are encouraged to explore and exploit the Zenoss capability tosuit their requirements. Zenoss provides a number of ZenPacks, developed and maintained by the Zenoss Community, whichmay also be applied to assist in meeting organisational monitoring goals.

The Ellipse 8 Application also provides out-of-the-box application program monitoring facilities such as:

• Ellipse Application Monitoring Application (via MSEMON)

• Ellipse Application traces

• Jboss Application Server logs

• Operating system logs

Skills and ToolsThe Appliance and scalable units are pre-configured to eliminate the need for customers to tune or change the appliance or theApplication Servers within them.

The skills required are:

Technical• General hardware skills for configuring disk at the hardware level

• General awareness of servers and deployment architectures

• Supply of Network addresses and domain names for Ellipse ServersEllipse TechnicalAdministration • Ellipse Administration for managing batch processes

• Managing integration points such as file drops, fax, and Enterprise Integration

• Ability to deploy fixes and patches through installation processesMiddleware

• Customers are not expected to understand, tune or configure middleware componentsembedded in the Ellipse deployment.

• Such as JBOSS, Messaging, any internal resource virtualisation, logs etc

Support FAQ

1. Support & SLA of Embedded Products

• Customers will engage the ABB support team. ABB will investigate the problem and provide a resolution, either acode fix, workaround or configuration change. This includes any embedded 3rd party products such as JBOSS..

• ABB may recommend an operating system patch to be installed and customers must have a current Oracle Linuxsupport contract.

• Embedded 3rd party products are included in the standard support contract for Ellipse. Oracle Linux is not anembedded product.

2. How up to date is the stack

• One of the advantages of ABB embedding the technology middleware is that it can be more responsive tomiddleware upgrades. Historically ABB has had to wait for the 3rd party vendor to upgrade the middleware and inparticular wait for adoption of later versions of related components. For example IBM Websphere remained on Java1.4 for many years while other middleware had moved to to 1.5, 1.6. This meant that new features could not beexploited in a timely manner.

• ABB can now move to the middleware and related components as required and deliver a seamless upgrade pathwithout customers having to manage the upgrade of those components themselves. This simplifies the deliverymodel for the software.

• In ABB's experience it has been rare that particular issues with the JVM or embedded middleware has caused an issue tothe running software. It is even rarer that customers would attempt to resolve those problems without the engagement ofABB. Customers will call ABB to determine the cause of a specific problem and provide a resolution.

3. Version dependencies

• ABB has incorporated all the middleware components required to run Ellipse 8. These are developed and tested anddelivered as a working unit. Customers cannot un bundle these components and replace/rebuild with othercomponents.

• Whenever any change is required, ABB will test and incorporate these changes within an appropriate future release.New versions of middleware components will be incorporated from time to time and delivered as an upgradedworking unit. The units are installed using a self contained install shield that installs and configures the software asrequired.

4. Availability

• The ABB Appliance Servers have been designed for high availability. Customers should implement the architectureas described in this guide. In the event of a server failure the user will be required to log on again and they will berouted to the alternate system.

• Customers are responsible for their own backup and recovery solutions. ABB can advise what components arevolatile and require backing up as opposed to parts of the system that are static and rebuild is the best option. TheABB Appliance model has been designed to separate these concepts to allow for faster application server rebuild. Forexample an application server rebuild at around 30 minutes is faster than an application server recover from backupscenario.

5. Disaster Recovery

• Customers should adopt an appropriate model to meet their Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery PointObjectives (RPO) in the event of a disaster.

• For example, customers can deploy duplicate infrastructure at alternate sites to achieve a fast RTO.

• Disaster recovery strategies and deployment will be established during implementation projects. Ellipse is designedto support various High Availability and Disaster Recovery scenarios.

• Disaster Recovery times are dependant the HA strategy adopted to support the RTO and RPO. For example theEllipse database and file systems can be replicated in real time using replicated SAN technologies through tostandalone restore of from backups. Choices around acceptable data loss versus cost versus time to recover willdrive the overall decision.

• Each option requires a differing amount of investment and should be balanced against the RPO. For example usingOracle supplied Log replication capabilities requires the use of Oracle Enterprise Edition instead of Oracle StandardEdition. The licensing of these database options are substantially different. If customers could tolerate a smallamount of data loss then home grown solutions revolving around copying logs may be appropriate.

• ABB consulting have the necessary skills and experience to assist with making these decisions and assisting with theimplementation.

• ABB also offer a managed services solution to take care of this for the customer.

6. Backing up data

• Volatile data includes

a. Oracle database data

b. Previous report output

c. Customised code, including groovy hooks and events, custom RDL's and Jasper reports

• Non Volatile

a. Software installs

b. Application server installations

7. Skills and Tools

• ABB do not expect customers to tune or change the configuration of the Appliance embedded products. The solutionhas been designed to perform in a consistent and predictable way based on the standard deployment of a scalableunit. The various tuning parameters have been set to deliver the desired performance. Customers are not expectedto change any of these settings.

• From time to time ABB may review those settings or in response to a particular issue. If a change is required, ABBwill deliver this change using the standard patch procedure. From time to time, ABB may direct a customer to makea specific change on the system in advance of a patch to alleviate the issue, however the patch will be required tobe installed to complete the resolution.

• Customers are not expected to have indepth the internal aspects of the appliance. Customers are expected to havean understanding of web architected solutions to assist ABB during problem diagnosis of issues. This includes theability to extract the requested diagnostic information, and advise on customer specific configuration information.Customer technical resources will work closely with ABB technical resources to solve specific problems.

• By simplifying and standardising to an appliance, problems can be kept to a minimum and the diagnostic of issueseasier.

8. Administration

• Administering Ellipse requires several administrators, including application administrators for managing security,business policy setup, overnight batch processing and similar application related configuration.

• Customers must manage the Ellipse solution from an infrastructure perspective. Customers will be required tomanage disk space including backup and recovery scenarios; hardware deployment; environment setup includinginstallation of operating systems following the ABB configuration; installation and management of the databasesincluding backup and recovery; performance monitoring of the application solution. Whilst ABB has made many ofthese tasks simpler and easier to perform under Ellipse 8 they are still required to be performed by the customer.

• In any IT landscape customers will have other infrastructure administrators managing its IT systems and these willinclude database administrators, printer administrators, email, active director or LDAP. These administrators will berequired to assist administering the overall solution landscape for Ellipse users.

• Ellipse 8 does not require any new administrators as compared to previous Ellipse releases, however thecomponents that must be administered have been changed and in some cases no longer required.

• Customers can choose the ABB managed services offering to manage some or all of these aspects of administration.

9. Diagnostic Monitoring and Capture

• ABB has improved the diagnostic capture process. The diagnostics capture make it simpler for ABB to identify thecomponents within the solution at fault and provide a suitable fix. From time to time more detailed and specificdiagnostic will be required and ABB will need to work with the customers technical resources to obtain thisinformation.

• With Ellipse 8.3 a diagnostic monitoring server will be available for monitoring various aspects of the solution.Customers can utilise this facility and is not difficult to learn and understand.

• ABB also offer a managed services solution to take care of this for the customer.

10. Cloud Enabled

• Cloud enabling Ellipse 8, by delivering the solution as a web only offering has greatly simplified the deploymentmodel. ABB regularly run vulnerability scanners to identify any vulnerability.

• The deployment model of Ellipse 8 revolves around deployment within a customer's network. This greatly reducesthe risk of vulnerabilities as corporate networks are often well secured and protected against threats.

11. Pre-defined Integration

• Customers often have SAP or Oracle for their financials systems but require asset management capabilities notavailable in these products. ABB has developed a standard integration to SAP and Oracle around the best of breedintegration scenarios between the products. This integration has taken into account the natural business scenariosthat have been adopted through a wide variety of ABB customers. It is envisaged that these scenarios will requirecomparatively less effort to implement.

12. Customer changes

• Customers may be required to make minor configuration changes from time to time as directed by ABB.

Outage and fix Scenarios

Issue Action Resolution

Ellipse SoftwareProblem 1. Capture trace

2. Raise a work order with ABB

a. ABB will resolve and ship fix following support guidelines. P1or next monthly service pack

b. Customer to install fixEmbeddedSoftwareProblem

1. Capture trace

2. Raise a work order with ABB

a. ABB will resolve and ship fix following support guidelines. P1or next monthly service pack

b. Customer to install fixSingle systemfailure 1. Users will required to

re-login as system should beconfigured in HighAvailability mode

2. Raise P1 work order withABB, capture systemdiagnostics as directed

3. Customer will restart server

a. ABB will assist analysis to determine cause.

b. Ship fix as required,

c. suggest course of action if required Hardware problem,configuration problem

d. Customer will have to liaise with hardware vendor

OperatingSystem issue 1. Raise work order

2. Capture diagnostics asdirected

a. ABB to analyze and assist with resolution.

b. System change will be shipped as a fix to the configuration.

c. Operating system patch will require installation by customeras directed by ABB.

d. ABB will update installation to include patchDisaster

1. Invoke disaster recoveryplan

2. Seek assistance from ABBwhere necessary

a. Customer will restore database and file system.

b. Initiate rebuild of Operating Application servers using ABBautomated installation

Hardware fault1. Customer to liaise with

hardware vendora. Resolve as directed by hardware vendor

Terms and AbbreviationsTerm or

Abbreviation Meaning

AJP The Apache JServ Protocol (AJP) is a binary protocol that can proxy inbound requests from a web serverthrough to an application server that sits behind the web server.

Apache Apache is an open-source web server maintained and distributed by the Apache Software Foundation.API An Application Programming Interface is a specification of the ways that a piece of software may be called

on by other software to perform its functions.Authentication Ensuring the identity of a potential user (for example: at logon time) with a defined level of certainty.Authorisation Enforcement of access control rules that limit a user's activities to the privileges that have been granted to

them.Availability The ability of the Ellipse user community to access Ellipse 8.Browser A software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide

Web.ConcurrentUser

A Concurrent User is a connected user actively working with the system. For a user to be consideredconcurrent, he or she must have an active transaction or have completed a transaction within the lastminute.

ConnectedUser

A Connected User is a registered user that is logged into the system.

Data Mart A repository of data gathered from, in this case, Ellipse 8 operational data for a business purpose. There canbe more than one Ellipse 8 datamart created for an organisation.

Deployment The activities associated with making Ellipse 8 available for use by customers.EES Ellipse Enterprise Services.EFS Ellipse File System.ETL Extract, transform and load (ETL) is a process in database usage and especially in data warehousing that

involves extracting data from outside sources.GIS Geographic Information System.Hibernate Hibernate's primary feature is mapping from Java classes to database tables.HTML Hypertext Markup Language is the basic language of web pages. It allows presentation information to be

intermixed with content in a way that is independent of platform and language.HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol is the protocol used between web browsers and web servers.HTTPS Secure HTTP is HTTP with encryption, and is used for sending sensitive content to and from web browsers,

such as account-ids and passwords. It is identified by the 'https' URL resource type.JDBC Java Database Connectivity is a Java implementation of platform-independent database access, analogous

to ODBC for non-Java applications.JMS Java Message Service, a Java message-oriented middleware API for sending messages between two or more

systems.JVM A Java Virtual Machine executes Java language programs. It is required because Java programs are

platform-independent.LDAP Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is a directory service and protocol that is used to make centrally

managed information available in distributed systems. It is required for Ellipse 8.NFS Network File System.Pentaho The Pentaho BI Suite is open source Business Intelligence suite with integrated reporting, dashboard, data

mining, workflow and ETL capabilities.RegisteredUser

A registered user is an individual who is uniquely identified with a personal user account in Ellipse.

Scalability In the Ellipse context to be able to increase the number of Ellipse application/batch servers to reflect theincrease in the number of concurrent users; all the while maintaining performance.

Service Bus Enterprise Service Bus is a software architecture construct that provides fundamental services for complexarchitectures using an event-driven and standards-based messaging engine (the bus).

SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol.SSL Secure Sockets Layer is a cryptographic protocol that enables two parties to have secure communications

over a non-secure network. SSL is superseded by TLS, which is functionally identical.Star schema Is the simplest style of data warehouse schema and consists of one or more fact tables referencing any

number of dimension tables.TLS Transport Layer Security (TLS) and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), are cryptographic protocols

that provide secure communications over an unsecured TCP/IP network such as the internet.

Web Service A Web Service is a software interface that is accessible using standard open web-basedprotocols such as SOAP. Web Services is a supporting technology

of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

WFS Web Feature Service Interface Standard (WFS) provides an interface allowing requests for geographicalfeatures across the web using platform-independent calls.

WMS A Web Map Service (WMS) is a standard protocol for serving geo-referenced map images over the Internet.WorkPlanner Work Planner is now incorporated into Ellipse 8. It supports advanced maintenance planning with specific,

integrated tools that optimally balance increased asset availability against the reduced costs of supportingthe asset.

WSDL Web Service Description Language describes the Web Services available in a Web Services server. WSDL isthe standard form of specification and delivery for SOA web services interfaces.

Zenoss Zenoss Core is free and open source software for monitoring applications, networks and servers.

Table 22: Glossary

Documents

Ellipse 8 Cloud Architecture and ... - Amazon Web Servicesec2-54-235-97-194.compute-1.amazonaws.com/... · hosting model, both of which are covered in this document. Ellipse provides