Appliance

Overview

In Tensor9's model, an Appliance represents the secure, self-contained environment where a Vendor's App runs within a Buyer's infrastructure. The appliance mirrors the configuration of the vendor's origin stack and provides the necessary compute, storage, and networking resources while ensuring that all data remains under the buyer’s control.

An appliance is isolated from external networks, supporting a range of environments, including cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP), hybrid cloud, and on-premise deployments—even in air-gapped setups.

Key Concepts

• App: The software package deployed inside the appliance.
• Vendor: The software provider that creates and delivers the app.
• Buyer: The customer organization that owns the infrastructure where the appliance is deployed.
• Digital Twin: A synchronized representation of the appliance within the vendor's Tensor9 AWS Account that provides observability without requiring direct access to the buyer’s environment.

Appliance Lifecycle

1. Prepared: A vendor creates a buyer profile in Tensor9 and generates an appliance setup script for the buyer's environment.
2. Provisioned: The buyer runs the setup script to deploy the appliance in their environment.
3. Release: The vendor’s app is deployed inside the appliance, using the buyer’s infrastructure resources.
4. Observability and Updates: The vendor uses the appliance's digital twin to monitor logs, metrics, and hardware state. Any updates to the app can be deployed through controlled releases without requiring direct access to the appliance.

By using appliances, vendors can securely deliver their apps while buyers retain full control over their data and infrastructure, meeting regulatory and compliance requirements.