Deployment scenarios

BMC Helix Data Manager supports a wide range of deployment options and data migration scenarios. While this flexibility is useful, the range of options can be confusing. The topics in this section can help architects define the deployment architecture for data migration that ensures optimal performance of the data migration task.

Typical deployment scenarios

This section outlines deployment methods for common BMC Helix Data Manager installation scenarios.

Single file system and BMC Helix Data Manager server

This setup is most common for a BMC Helix Data Manager migration job. The BMC Helix Data Manager server can be on-premises or in the cloud.

The BMC Helix Data Manager runtime, import, and export file systems are installed on a separate, single server.

The runtime file system accesses the source and target databases over the network and read/writes the data files locally to the BMC Helix Data Manager server.

Migrate to the cloud

This setup is the typical configuration for migrating data to the cloud or between data centers. A BMC Helix Data Manager server is part of the on-premises and cloud architecture.

The export and import file systems are in different data centers and are not shared. Hence, full data migration requires you to manually copy the export files between the source and target data centers. This file copy operation happens over the internet and consequently is very slow.

Advanced deployment scenarios

This section outlines advanced deployment scenarios for installing BMC Helix Data Manager.

Multiple tiers

You can install each of the components of BMC Helix Data Manager on different tiers of your architecture, or you can install the components on a single machine. The following illustration shows the deployment of BMC Helix Data Manager in a production environment. The virtual or physical machines are shown with a dotted outline.

• BMC Helix Data Manager Workbench - Installed on a dedicated machine accessible to browsers.
• BMC Helix Data Manager Repository - Installed on the same machine as BMC Helix Data Manager Engine ensures optimal performance because most repository traffic is from BMC Helix Data Manager Engine.
  Accessible to BMC Helix Data Manager Workbench.
• BMC Helix Data Manager Engine - Installed on a machine that has access to the source database, the target database, and the shared file system. The BMC Helix Data Manager Engine reads or writes the data export files from the file system.
• File system - BMC Helix Data Manager migrates data by exporting and importing data to and from files on the file system. For all data import operations, the file system on which the export files are stored must be accessible to BMC Helix Data Manager Engine.
• AR System databases - You can host the source and target database on any database servers. By placing the source and target database on the same database server, the complexity of file system configuration is reduced, and it is easier to run comparative queries across the databases. BMC Helix Data Manager Engines must be able to connect to the source and target database.

Multiple BMC Helix Data Manager Engines

You can connect only one Workbench to a single Repository. But you can connect more than one Engine instance to a single Repository. This configuration allows a high degree of flexibility in when installing and configuring BMC Helix Data Manager. For example, you might want to install the Engine with a local deployment for more than one Microsoft SQL database server. The following example configuration shows two Engine installations connected to a single Repository.

Prior to start-up, you must configure the Engine with a connection to the Repository. After the initial connection, the Engine automatically registers itself and is available to execute tasks.