Ensuring Cloud Resilience for Siemens PLM: A Comprehensive Analysis with Appranix Cloud Resilience

Appranix
Appranix
Published in
3 min readAug 3, 2023

Cloud resilience plays a crucial role in maintaining the availability, scalability, and security of Siemens PLM in a cloud environment. In this technical blog, we will delve deeper into the AWS services utilized by Siemens PLM, such as EC2, Load Balancers, EBS, EFS, RDS (Oracle or Aurora Postgres), and examine how Appranix Cloud Resilience Platform can provide resilience for the entire Siemens PLM ecosystem. Additionally, we will explore Appranix’s virtual environment cloning mechanism, which simplifies the creation and management of test and development environments for Siemens PLM.

Understanding the AWS Services Utilized by Siemens PLM

Amazon EC2, RDS, Load Balancing Services

Amazon EC2 provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud and is a key component of the Siemens PLM infrastructure. EC2 instances host various components of Siemens PLM, including Teamcenter Web tiers, Enterprise tier, Teamcenter FMS, Active Workspace Client Tier, Search server, database and license servers. Siemens PLM also leverages EC2’s auto-scaling feature to dynamically adjust the number of instances based on demand, ensuring scalability and high availability.

Load balancers, such as the AWS Application Load Balancer (ALB) and Network Load Balancer (NLB) distribute incoming traffic across multiple EC2 instances to enhance performance and availability. By intelligently distributing requests, load balancers ensure that Siemens PLM can handle increasing user demand and mitigate the risk of overload or single points of failure.

Siemens PLM utilizes Amazon RDS to host their databases, which can be Oracle or Aurora Postgres. RDS offers managed database services, providing automated backups, scalability, and replication.

Appranix Cloud Resilience Copilot

Appranix Cloud Resilience Copilot is a comprehensive solution that extends cloud resilience capabilities for Siemens PLM beyond the native AWS services. It offers several key features that enhance the resilience of the entire Siemens PLM environment.

Automated Resilience

Appranix Cloud Resilience Copilot enables automated backups and recovery for Siemens PLM components. It captures the entire infrastructure state, including EC2 instances, EBS volumes, EFS file systems, and RDS databases, allowing for quick and reliable recovery in the event of an outage or disaster.

Application Consistency

Appranix ensures application-consistent backups and recoveries by coordinating and sequencing the backup and restore processes across different components. This feature guarantees data integrity and consistency, minimizing the risk of data corruption during recovery operations.

Cloning and Test/Dev Environments

Appranix’s virtual environment cloning mechanism simplifies the creation and management of test and development environments for Siemens PLM. It allows users to clone the entire infrastructure stack, including EC2 instances, EBS volumes, EFS file systems, and RDS databases, without impacting the production environment. This capability accelerates the testing and development cycles, leading to faster time-to-market for Siemens PLM enhancements.

Policy-Driven Resilience

Appranix Cloud Resilience Copilot provides a policy-driven approach to define resilience and recovery objectives. Users can set policies based on Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) specific to Siemens PLM. This enables efficient resource allocation, prioritizing critical components and ensuring that the most essential data and services are restored first.

Conclusion

Ensuring cloud resilience for Siemens PLM requires a comprehensive approach that encompasses both AWS services and specialized solutions like Appranix Cloud Resilience Copilot. Leveraging services such as EC2, Load Balancers, EBS, EFS, and RDS, Siemens PLM can achieve scalability, high availability, and data durability. Appranix complements these services by providing automated resilience, application consistency, virtual environment cloning, and policy-driven recovery mechanisms. By combining these tools and strategies, Siemens PLM can build a robust and resilient cloud environment that ensures uninterrupted operations, efficient development cycles, and enhanced customer experiences.

References

https://blogs.sw.siemens.com/teamcenter/teamcenter-on-aws-cloud-in-step-with-the-latest-cloud-solutions/

https://aws.amazon.com/partners/success/america-makes-siemens-plm-software/

https://d1.awsstatic.com/architecture-diagrams/ArchitectureDiagrams/siemens-teamcenter-ra.pdf?did=wp_card&trk=wp_card

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