Private cloud infrastructure is a dedicated hosting model in which an organization provisions and maintains its own server resources to run SmartSimple, rather than using SmartSimple-managed shared hosting. Organizations that subscribe to the Private Cloud offering control their own hardware, operating system, network configuration, and disaster recovery approach.
This model is distinct from a Private Cloud Managed Server environment, in which SmartSimple hosts a dedicated, non-shared server on the organization's behalf.
Who: Global administrators
When to Use Private Cloud Infrastructure
Private cloud infrastructure is appropriate when an organization needs direct control over its SmartSimple hosting environment. Consider this option in these scenarios:
- The organization has subscribed to the SmartSimple Private Cloud offering and will host SmartSimple on its own hardware.
- Security or compliance requirements mandate a dedicated, non-shared hosting environment.
- The organization requires direct control over server configuration, resources, and upgrade timing.
- The organization's team has the technical expertise to provision and support the required infrastructure components.
Infrastructure Requirements
A successful deployment requires a supported operating system, sufficient computing resources and storage, and specific network ports opened for web, administrative, and application traffic.
Domain Administration
To use a custom domain address instead of the SmartSimple default domain, the organization needs the following:
- A registered domain.
- A fully qualified domain name for the SmartSimple application. This must include a subdomain in the format applicationname.yourdomain.com (for example, apply.smartsimple.com).
- An A record in the organization's DNS pointing to its server.
- A reverse DNS entry for the server (optional).
- An SSL certificate in PEM format. This can be purchased with a certificate signing request (CSR) provided by SmartSimple, or the organization may provide an existing certificate and private key.
Disaster Recovery
Because an organization may provision all or part of the infrastructure itself, several options for disaster recovery are available. The following outlines the SmartSimple standard strategy, followed by the options available to the organization.
SmartSimple Standard Strategy
By default, SmartSimple provides disaster recovery through the following strategy:
- A hot backup environment stays online continuously, hosted in a different geographical region. It mirrors the production environment and synchronizes through a daily SSH rsync.
- A copy of each daily database backup transfers to an archive location and is retained for up to 90 days. The archive uses a combination of Amazon S3 and Glacier storage, accessed through Amazon Web Services (AWS) CLI API calls from the production environment.
Available Options
Organizations can choose from the following options instead of the standard strategy:
- Allow SmartSimple to provision the standard strategy described above.
- Provision infrastructure to fulfill the same functions.
- Develop a separate strategy entirely, such as a daily image of server volumes instead of a hot backup environment.
Resources
For more information about Private Cloud infrastructure, see: