Dedicated Customer Virtual Private Cloud

Overview

You can choose to have your Appian Cloud environments hosted in a dedicated Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). This feature provides your environments with network isolation by allocating a distinct range of IP addresses (CIDR block) for your use within the Appian Cloud platform.

This feature provides isolation for your workloads using advanced, software-based controls. Think of it as a private, roped-off area within a secure facility. These software-defined rules act like a dedicated security guard for your area, strictly controlling what network traffic is allowed to enter or leave your applications. This approach provides a strong layer of separation that meets the isolation goals of the feature.

This dedicated configuration allows for simplified, secure integration with your self-managed or other cloud-based external resources, such as databases or web services. This enhances your ability to securely connect your Appian environments to your corporate network.

Prerequisites

• Be on an appropriate existing success plan.
• Open a support case requesting Appian Support to move your environments to a Dedicated Customer Virtual Private Cloud.
• When moving your environments to a dedicated customer Virtual Private Cloud, you will need to reconfigure your PrivateLink configurations for environments with preexisting PrivateLink connections. Follow the steps described in the AWS PrivateLink Integration with Appian Cloud setup section.

FAQ

What are my responsibilities in this Architecture?

We will be responsible for maintaining and securing the dedicated VPC and Appian Cloud’s VPC. You will be responsible for implementing any required configuration to integrate with your self-managed or cloud external resources.

Is High Availability supported in this Architecture?

Yes, the solution for a High Availability configuration replicates to 3 availability zones within the same geographic region, delivering load balancing among environments and with RTO and RPO as described in High Availability for Appian Cloud).

Can I use Appian Portals with a dedicated VPC?

Yes, but the cloud resources required to support portals will be located in the Appian Cloud VPC, not in your dedicated VPC.

How does Appian Cloud portability work with this architecture?

Similar to a regular migration. An archive of the entire Appian structure (engines, databases, attachments) is created and transferred via a shared AWS S3 bucket or via sFTP, and then deployed to another Appian installation. The only difference is that the archive will be transferred to the instances in the dedicated VPC.

How is data protected in this Architecture?

Data at rest is protected at the disk level using industry-standard algorithms (AES) at key lengths considered to be strong for that algorithm (256-bit). Appian secures inbound web traffic for end users connecting through a web browser using TLS. See our TLS Policies for details.

What AWS tenancy model will EC2 instances hosted on the Dedicated VPC have?

EC2 instances running on your Dedicated VPC will use the AWS default tenancy model. For more details see the AWS documentation.

What regions support this architecture?

Any region supported in Appian Cloud.

What will be downtime to migrate my existing environment to a Dedicated VPC?

A scheduled maintenance window is required to migrate a environment to this architecture. The downtime will be similar to a scheduled restart.

Are all Appian Cloud exclusive features available in a Dedicated VPC?

Yes, environments in a Dedicated VPC will have the same Appian Cloud features as regular environments. Review Cloud Exclusive Feature Support.

Are all Appian Cloud Integrations supported in a Dedicated VPC?

Yes, review Appian Cloud Integration.

Will there be one dedicated VPC for each of my environments (including development, test, production)?

No, there will be only one dedicated VPC that will be shared by your different environments.

Do we support Dedicated VPC with Enhanced Business Continuity?

Appian offers 1 dedicated VPC to be shared by all customer environments. We will work with you to restore your services in the backup Enhanced Business Continuity region in a dedicated VPC.

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