Introduction to Ensim Unify
Ensim Unify is the industry's first true carrier-grade multi-service hosting solution. It is a flexible hosting automation infrastructure through which hosting service providers can manage multiple Windows® services, such as Hosted Exchange 2003, SharePoint and .NET Web hosting. It addresses critical operational challenges for provisioning, monitoring, metering, self-management, authentication, and integration, and it is the first hosting platform to offer “out-of-the-box” support for ASP.NET Web site hosting.
Ensim Unify is designed to deliver the reliability, scalability, and performance that are key to successfully offering mass-hosted services to a large and growing market. The system's modular architecture makes it a turnkey solution that can also be integrated with a service provider's or reseller's existing operations support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS) using the Ensim Unify API.
Ensim Unify has the following components (Illustration):
Platform servers. The servers service providers use to manage databases, control panels, services, and other system functions. Resellers do not manage platform servers. Platform servers include:
Active Directory® server. The server on which Active Directory software is installed; the domain controller for the system. To improve performance and reliability, service providers can have more than one Active Directory server.
MS SQL database server. The server on which Microsoft® SQL database software is installed. This server manages the database functions of the system. All configuration information for the Ensim Unify platform is stored in an MS SQL database on this server.
Provisioning engine (PE)server(s). Servers that manage the provisioning of services to customers. Service providers can have multiple PE servers to balance loads and provisioning requests.
Control panel (CP) server(s). Servers that host the control panels. Service providers can have multiple CP servers to balance loads and control panel requests.
Hosting server(s). Servers on which services, such as Hosted Exchange and Windows Web Hosting, are installed. Hosting servers are also known as "resources."
When a service is sold to an organization, the server space and other resources required to provide the service are allocated from a hosting server. Service providers have one or more hosting servers for each service, and each service is installed on a separate server. Hosting servers cannot have more than one service installed on them.
Resellers who purchase hosting servers can manage these servers through the reseller control panel.
Ensim Unify API. An application programming interface (API) to Ensim Unify. You use the API to streamline common tasks and integrate third-party systems with Ensim Unify.
Services. The services you sell to resellers and organizations. Each service is installed on a service-specific hosting server. For more information, click the links below to open the service-specific Help.
Web-based control panels. Graphical user interfaces to Ensim Unify. These control panels enable service providers, resellers, organization administrators, and users to manage their accounts, resources, and other system settings.
Each control panel has a comprehensive Help system and quick-start tutorial designed to help users find answers quickly.
To access online Help, log in to a control panel, then click the Help icon in the upper right portion of any page. The Help icon links to context-sensitive Help pages. You can also open the general Help system and service-specific Help modules from Help navigation panel (bottom left).