Architecture & Security

Architecture

ScaleXtreme's unique architecture allows you to get a unified view of all your servers - whether they are virtual, physical, or cloud - and manage them as if they were all in a single location. This includes creating servers that can be deployed on any cloud, anytime, as well as being able to run automation jobs that span machines hosted in different cloud providers and different geographies.

This product architecture allows servers that are even behind network firewalls to be managed from the cloud. This allows you to mix and manage servers from the public cloud (Amazon EC2, for instance) and inside your enterprise (running on your internal VMware private cloud, for instance).

How do we do this? Our agent software connects to the ScaleXtreme cloud over HTTPS, ensuring that all communication is encrypted. The connection is a one-way HTTPS connection, which means that our product does not require any inbound port to be opened on your network firewall (if you are managing an internal server behind your firewall) or any inbound port on your server. All of our rich functionality, including monitoring, patch management, automation, etc. all work over this one-way HTTPS connection.

Agent Software

The ScaleXtreme agent is natively compiled for the platform to remove any dependencies on any additional software (such as requiring Java or other packages to be installed). It maintains a minimal size and processing footprint. We support Windows and Linux and you can find detailed platform support information and some more details about the agent here .

The server agent authenticates the cloud using tamper-proof digital certificates that are integrated directly into the agent software package. This means that the communication is secure, but also that you don't have to do anything additional to install the agent.

Our unique architecture also allows a server to be managed without change even if it is moved to another cloud or location - there is no dependency on IP address or any machine-specific information.

Security

The only time that ScaleXtreme will ask you for credentials is to help you auto-install the agent on the server for certain public clouds (such as Amazon EC2 and Rackspace). You can choose to completely ignore this convenience feature and install the agent yourself. If you choose to use this feature, the product never stores login or authentication credentials to your servers because the software agent authenticates and connects to the cloud, instead of the cloud using inbound ports to manage the server. So rest assured, your server credentials can never be compromised because we don't have them.