On its own, Alfresco is a leading open-source provider of Content Management and Process services. But Alfresco on Amazon Web Services (AWS) combines mobile collaboration, capabilities and file access with immense security, more control and the added policy enforcement that enterprises need. Basically Alfresco on AWS gives you the provision to achieve rapid time to value, enhances the process thereby enhancing the business workflows.
Solution
Alfresco Platform is popular because it’s an open and powerful platform, easily customizable and extendable. It can be easily integrated with other existing applications, processes and content.
There are a number of legacy Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platforms but Alfresco stands above them all. It provides all the content management aspects but is also architected with the latest web systems. Alfresco delivers the most advanced features that help simplify collaboration and idea sharing among content teams. Alfresco on AWS offers the following:
- Secure file sharing for organizations. Alfresco on AWS combines the collaboration, file access, and file sharing capabilities of consumer services with the security, control and policy enforcement that organizations demand.
- Alfresco also stores content and process services in the cloud. Alfresco on AWS is much bigger than just a medium for file collaboration or file sharing. It makes your business process much simpler. Alfresco on AWS caters to all use cases, whether your finance team is processing huge volumes of invoices or dealing with highly confidential and crucial data for just one organization.
- Alfresco simplifies information governance in the cloud, it includes compliance as well as records management. With Alfresco on AWS, both the enterprises and governments have a simple and low-cost solution for acts, compliance with regulations and mandates. Alfresco Records Management has an exquisite records management metadata model that supports various standards like NOARK and MoReq2010.
How To Quickly Setup Alfresco Content Server On The AWS Cloud?
You can use the quick start method to deploy the Alfresco Content Services server cluster on the AWS Cloud.
Quick Start is an enterprise-grade configuration for Alfresco Content Services. Quick Start includes a myriad of AWS cloud formation templates that deploy Alfresco Content Services into highly available and secure AWS cloud environments automatically.
Successfully setting up Alfresco on the AWS platform requires the following steps:
- A virtual private cloud or (VPC) needs to be configured across the two Availability Zones. There should be one public and one private subnet in each of the Availability zones.
- Set up an internet gateway to access the Internet, it will be used by the bastion hosts to acknowledge traffic.
- The managed NAT gateways in the public subnets should allow outbound Internet access for resources in private subnets.
- In the public subnet the Linux bastion host allows inbound Secure Shell (SSH) to access the resources in the private subnets.
- Elastic Load Balancing is required that is integrated with the Auto Scaling for load balancing across the Alfresco Content Services server. Customizable CPU based thresholds are needed for scaling the instance capacity.
- An IAM role with fine-grained permissions are needed for stringent management of access to the AWS services, and the security groups to restrict access only to the required and necessary portals.
- Alfresco Content services servers and index servers, should be in the private subnet.
- Another requirement being Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for shared file storage for the cluster.
- Amazon Relational Database System or Amazon Aurora for MySQL is used as the shared database for the cluster. Subsequently, the database is deployed across multiple Availability Zones and also backed up automatically on the proper schedule.
- It is your choice to create a new VPC or deploy Alfresco Content Services into one that is already existing.
In conclusion, let’s highlight the key benefits of Alfresco and AWS:
- Simple and lucid file sharing and collaboration.
- Excellent metadata and full text search.
- Choice of private AWS instance or full SaaS.
- Exquisite and powerful document management features.
- Easy and efficient task management and workflow.
- Absolute IT control of access and security.
Alfresco on AWS brings the best of both the worlds. Alfresco’s modern architecture of robust and flexible content and process management capabilities along with AWS’s agile and scalable platform services help organizations to better control and manage their content and processes with the powerful, scalable and open source platform.
Don’t miss to grab a little more knowledge about ECM here.
Pratyush Kumar
