DocsMicrosoft Azure Services overview
Blue Prism utilize Microsoft Azure Services for providing the underlying infrastructure for the Blue prism Cloud Digital Workforce®.
Microsoft Azure Services is an ever-expanding set of cloud services that enable Blue Prism Cloud to deliver Robotic Process Automation (RPA) services to our client base on a global scale, being able to provide a localized data center infrastructure.
The Blue Prism Cloud Digital Workforce® is delivered on a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform from an Azure Data Center and is designed to automate and digitize the execution of knowledge work performed by human workers.
The service is provided using a number of Virtual Machines (VMs). These are configured to support the different Blue Prism Cloud components and are configured into different subnets to provide security segregation zones. Network Security Groups (NSGs) are established to ensure only acceptable traffic flows between the subnets and the Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection to the client site. More details of the underlying infrastructure can be found in the Evolution Edition EER4 and Connectivity and Access EER4 datasheets.
When Blue Prism deploy a new service to a client, a new subscription from Microsoft is used to provide the high-level segregation. Subscription segregation ensures that no clients can see each other’s environments.
The subscription is normally established in the data center which is closest to the client office. The map below shows the data centers where Blue Prism can deploy to, including the locations of US Government approved regions.
The minimum configuration of a client subscription is nine virtual machines. This is made up as follows:
- 1 x Management Server
- 1 x Web Server, supporting Hub and Interact
- 1 x IADA Orchestrator
- 5 x Production Virtual Workers
- 1 x Development Worker
The databases to support the Blue Prism Cloud Digital Workforce are not configured on a VM but are delivered using Microsoft Azure DB services. This ensures that the databases are in continual operational status irrespective of a component level failure as the underlying technology supports replication. Disaster recovery services ensure that a point in time recovery can be performed to allow a controlled rollback to anywhere within the last seven days. Because of the level of resiliency built into the platform Blue Prism Cloud offer as standard a 99.9% service level agreement for availability.
Blue Prism also utilize Microsoft Cognitive Services to deliver their IADA.ai and IADA Natural Language Understanding services.
The VMs are built with the same configuration. Each VM has two virtual CPU cores allocated to them, eight GB of RAM and sixteen GB of storage.
Blue Prism monitor the VMs and ensure that they are running efficiently, where issues are identified they are investigated and action undertaken to rectify. This could be by scaling up the compute resources, which can be performed on the fly, associated with the troublesome VM whilst the investigation is performed.
