Appian Licensing for On-Premise to Cloud migration

Hi himanshun

Please find the response about what you have asked mention below:

1. I believe you need to go through this url: docs.appian.com/.../byok.html to understand about the cloud installation and the licensing.

2. If you have downloaded these plugins from forum, you can find the details about whether this plugin is cloud approved or not under summary view of record(Shared component).
But if you are the one who Developed this plugin, then you won't have cloud support unless you hand it over to Appian and they verify whether this plugin is eligible for cloud based infrastructure and approve the same .

3. I believe you need to understand about the prerequisites prior to moving your Appian to cloud. Also need to take care of the plugins which is required for your existing projects / objects (currently available on premise).


I hope this will help.

Hi himanshun ,
1) I think you can use same licence as well, Depends on your licence type. It is mentioned "Long-term license files are valid for an extended period of time and can only be used on the server that they were requested for."
docs.appian.com/.../Requesting_and_Installing_a_license.html

2) On plugins, as mentioned by Alok, you need to check on forum for shared plugin. But if it not Appian cloud then you can deploy any of the plugin whether it is Appian cloud approved or not. But not recommended.

3) Please confirm your infra architecture, whether you are going with distributed System or Single server. And it would be good if you can check for Load balance as well.

Thanks,
Sandeep

Hello himanshun,

Regarding the licensing I would suggest to talk to your sales representative, open a case or send and email. Itself contact Appian they can help you better on those cases.

Regarding the plugins read the posts above, those are the right things to do.

As a quick note i have worked on an on premise environment and ending deploying to Cloud (standard processes no integrations involved) and not special changes are required, the only change is on the data sources names (I needed to republish the data store) and the email senders.

Definitely tell us more about your current architecture so we can advice better, but here are some thoughts.

Regarding the migration to the cloud. Lot of things to consider if you have certain things like:
* are you using jboss? Weblogic?
* do you have integrations? If so, how ? Plugins ? JMS?FTP? WSDL? Integrated systems?maybe VPN will be required. If no integrations then you are ok
* which database are you using right now? Oracle ? MySQL? If you have MySQL then not too much to consider here. Maybe just the names of the datasource which you will use
* how do you login? SAML?
* do you have a cluster?
* how much configuration have you done to Appian, for example I logging configuration? emails senders ? Any special jar?
* do you have on your custom plugins some way to access a shared folder ? Or any special resource ?
* do you require special monitoring over your instances? Auditory ? Compliance ? Or some special security/architecture/governance requirement ?

Lot of things come to my mind , please tell us more about your case so are able to help you more.

Jose

Since you aren't using Appian Cloud, some of the answers above are potentially misleading. Bring Your Own Key is only relevant to Appian Cloud. The same is true with "Cloud Approved" plugins. That approval is specific to the Appian Cloud PaaS and is not directly related to your IaaS cloud plans.

1. You will need new license files as you will be changing servers. All you need to do is request new licenses through support once you have the server information available.

2. Plugin compatibility has nothing to do with your IaaS setup. As long as your infrastructure is setup to allow the plugins to function as they would on-premise then you are fine. Appian Cloud does not allow certain plugin functionality as it would be a potential conflict for the PaaS offering. For example, a plugin that is allowed to access and modify files on the Appian Cloud servers would be an issue for the PaaS security configuration and would not be "Cloud Approved". If you run that same plugin on your own IaaS cloud your security team may be okay with that level of sever interaction.

3. You are basically just moving to a new server. The same preparation and validation should be taken into account for shifting to Iaas (i.e. infrastructure, network, security, data migration, etc).

Hi,

Thanks all for your replies and pointers.

As mentioned earlier we are not moving to Appian cloud but we are moving the application to the cloud setup which is internally setup. Also the BYOK works only for premier support of Appian. So that will also be not applicable.

We are also using quite a few portal forms in our existing application. Is there any such validation to JSP to be done for the version or the compatibility over cloud. (We are planning to use the same Appain version and are not upgrading the same.)

Thanks again. I will go through the details provided and will add to my queries.

Thank you ericg329. Your answers are right on the mark.

It won't be any different than moving to another server in your existing on-premise infrastructure. The Appian apps and configuration are the same. You just need replacement license keys and also need to handle all of the other configuration outside of Appian (web servers, back-ups, permissions, etc). It being on an IaaS or Cloud that you are managing won't make Appian run differently.