Amaxus Installation Scenarios
Executive Summary
Amaxus®, Box UK's XML-based Content Management System (CMS), facilitates high-level management of documents, web resources and digital assets and can deliver a broad range of availability, security and performance requirements for a diverse range of organisations.
An entry-level single-server implementation of Amaxus Foundation hosted in-house or with an ISP can enable cost-conscious small and medium size enterprises to establish a managed internet and intranet presence.
Amaxus Standard and Advanced offer an increasing range of features and can be implemented in high-availability, high-performance and high-security configurations across multiple-sites and locations.
Hosted single-server installation
The basic Amaxus installation consists of a single web/database server accessible from the Internet. Authorised users can create and manage content from any location on the Internet. As a hosted service, this solution is ideal for an environment with little or no in-house IT infrastructure.
Figure 1 – Single-server ISP hosted implementation
In-house single-server installation
A step up from an ISP hosted installation is a single web/database server hosted in-house. Authorised users can create and manage Internet and Intranet content from the local Intranet. This solution is ideal for a small to medium size enterprise with some in-house IT infrastructure and support in place.
Figure 2 – Single-server internally hosted implementation
Resilient multi-server installation
Many medium to large enterprises with 24/7 data requirements would suit a highly-resilient implementation with the Intranet/Internet/database and management roles separated onto resilient server clusters to offer high uptime and performance benefits. In the scenario outlined below, the core database is hosted on dedicated server cluster allowing one or more of the database servers to fail without loss of service. Additionally, each Intranet and Internet web site is hosted on multiple servers using Network Load Balancing (NLB), again allowing one or more servers to fail without loss of service.
Figure 3 – A highly-resilient implementation of Amaxus
Distributed environment installation
Many organisations have a geographically diverse structure, with sites and offices in multiple locations. Amaxus is flexible enough to integrate with most distributed environments. For example, an organisation may have a head office in one location and one or more remote sites with requirements to access data.
The example below illustrated how Amaxus could be implemented across two sites connected with a low bandwidth or unreliable network connection.
Figure 4 – A master-slave distributed implementation of Amaxus
In this scenario, data is managed and published at the primary site and replicated to the remote site as appropriate (out-of-hours, for example). This allows remote users to have full and high-speed access to corporate data without relying on the wide area network (WAN) links. This solution would be ideal for organisations with a centrally managed data or knowledge infrastructure and diverse or remote sites which require reliable access to this information.
In the second scenario below, three sites manage their own content locally. Read-only copies would be replicated via the primary site to the remaining two sites allowing the full content to be available at all three sites, whilst retaining the ability for local sites to manage their own content.
Figure 5 - A read/read-write distributed implementation of Amaxus
Conclusion
This document briefly outlined a number of installation scenarios to demonstrate how Amaxus could be scaled and integrated with a diverse range of organisations, from a single-server hosted solution for small businesses to multi-national organisations with a globally distributed technical and human resources environment.
