CA Client Automation

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  • 1.  Client Automation works over the Internet only.

    Posted Jul 17, 2020 01:48 PM
    Dear, good afternoon !!
    In the organization I work for, we are creating an environment in the Azure Cloud, with Version 14.3. Client Automation.
    And there was a demand to put everything to work over the internet.

    I would like to test and find out how Ca Client Automation works over the Internet only.
    1st) is it possible?
    2) What I need to have released. (port rules only)
    3rd) All features will work normally.
    Remote access, software usage, and others.


  • 2.  RE: Client Automation works over the Internet only.
    Best Answer

    Posted Jul 17, 2020 02:18 PM

    HI Andre,

     

    I have recently (a little over a year ago) run ITCM in an Azure environment so I can share some of my experience:

     

    • With a direct WAN link or a VPN from your company to Azure, you don't need anything extra to make it work in terms of networking. However if you are working over purely internet connections you will need to look at ENC, which will add complexity and additional costs for the ENC servers.
    • My biggest issue was performance. Even with the SQL Servers and ITCM Servers running on the highest tier hardware, and the network connections at the highest tier offered by Microsoft, I found the entire ITCM environment to be sluggish. In my opinion this was due not so much to the server hardware environment, but rather to less than ideal network connectivity between components. It was my impression that MS deliberately regulates network traffic between servers. Since ITCM is extremely dependent on inter-server network transfers I believe this was the primary source of our sluggishness.
      • Database intensive operations (including but not limited to GUI performance) were slower than I would have expected.
      • Engine collect jobs, from Scalability Servers also located in the same Azure region, were very noticeably slower than expected, resulting in us implementing more servers than anticipated which of course drove up the cost.
    • Costs were also an issue – since MS charges for network 'egress', i.e. data leaving the Azure environment, the cost of delivering software packages using Scalability Servers in the cloud to agents outside of the cloud rose dramatically when we started patching.
      • On the flip-side, placing servers on the company premises to avoid data charges only exacerbated the performance issues of inventory collections.

     

    In short, I would not recommend running any medium to large ITCM environment in Azure without careful evaluation of performance and costs.

     

    Given my background of 22 years at CA most of which were spent implementing ITCM for customers, therefore having experienced ITCM performance in many different environments, I believe I am reasonably qualified to evaluate the performance characteristics of ITCM in the Azure environment as compared to on-premise environments whether physical or virtual. While it did function, the experience was far from ideal. As a very data-transfer intensive application I don't believe ITCM is a good candidate to be implemented fully in the cloud. Smaller environments may work reasonably well but as your Agent population increases, your performance will decline sharply and this will likely result in higher costs and lower satisfaction.

     

    Steve McCormick