Skip to content

Architecture and Requirements

Components

Clarive's architecture consists of the following general elements:

  • Automation Server(s)
  • Web Server
  • Web Client
  • Staging-Build server(s)
  • Communication agent(s)

Automation Server

Clarive has at least one automation server. This server is responsible for the following tasks:

  • Planning and execution of jobs and integration with schedulers.
  • Build management and deployment. Communication with agents.
  • Batch processes, such as purging or backup.
  • Integration with external tools: Source code management, Incident management, cmdb, etc.
  • Export and Import of data.

Web Server

The primary user interface of Clarive is Web-based.

Clarive features an application server that provides the web interface of Clarive and the SOAP and REST WebServices. The web server is based on the Catalyst framework and runs standalone or under compatible servers like Apache, Nginx or Lighttpd.

Web Client

Clarive Web client is a single-page application that delivers a dynamic and natural user experience, similar to that of a client application, but from any system on the network.

Agents

Realising the process of building and deploying applications, Clarive needs to communicate with servers on the network: with proprietary agents or via SSH.

Clarive agents are compatible with any UNIX, Linux or Windows technology.

Interfaces

The product includes the following interfaces for customization and integration within the company.

  • Web-services SOAP and REST
  • Command line
  • JavaScript DSL and API for the implementation of plugins and automation logic

Authentication and authorisation

The user can authenticate to Clarive using the most common standards in the company:

  • LDAP, Active Directory
  • Proprietary Authentication
  • Integration with external authentication and authorization SSO (Single Sign-On), such as BMC Atrium, CAS, SAML, by use key generation.

Through the tool's API the load of users and granting permissions to roles, groups and applications can be handled.

System Requirements

Clarive requires a server with 64-bit processor. The machine can be virtualized or not. Other requirements depend on machine usage requirements, measured considering the following variables:

  • Number of users
  • Size of the application
  • Version freqeuncy of the application
  • Number of daily deployments

Supported Operating systems (Server)

Linux 2.6 or higher, 64 bits

  • CentOS 7.x, 8.x
  • RedHat Linux 7.x, 8.x
  • Oracle Linux 7.x, 8.x
  • Debian 9 or higher (or Ubuntu equivalent)

Supported Databases

  • MongoDB 3.6 or higher (Mongo 4.2.x recommended)

Previously supported MongoDB versions

  • Clarive 7.2.x: Mongo 3.2+
  • Clarive 7.0.x: Mongo 2.6+
  • Clarive 6.8.x and below: Mongo 2.4+

Supported web browsers

These browser versions apply to Clarive 7.2.x and higher.

  • Microsoft Edge 41.x (Windows)
  • Google Chrome 80 or higher (Windows, MacOS, Linux)
  • Mozilla Firefox 68 or higher (Windows, MacOS, Linux)
  • Safari 9 or higher (MacOS)

Previously supported browsers

The following Clarive versions are not supported as of Dec/2019, but we list the supported browser information for historical reasons.

  • Clarive v7.0.x: IE11+, Firefox 4.x+, Chrome 20+, Safari 5+
  • Clarive v6.8.x: IE9+, Firefox 3.x+, Chrome 20+, Safari 5+
  • Clarive v6.2.x and v6.4.x: IE8+, Firefox 3.x+, Chrome 20+, Safari 5+

Mainframe (Agent and Clarive ZSCM)

  • z/OS zLinux (Agent only)
  • z/OS 1.7 or higher (Agent, Clarive ZSCM)

We recommend having a minimum of 2 separate database servers in your installation, so that the MongoDB database server processes run separately from the Clarive server processes and avoid memory/cpu bottlenecks.

For further optimization, we recommend 4 servers:

  • split the Clarive Web Server and Dispatcher server into 2 servers.
  • split the MongoDB server into a replica set, for data safety and report running activities.

Clarive Server

There are 2 main server processes that will run in the Clarive server: the Web Server and the Dispatcher.

These are the recommended requisites for the Clarive server:

  • Operating system: Linux 64 bits
  • Cores: 8
  • RAM: 32 GB
  • Disk:
    • $CLARIVE_BASE (software): 5 GB
    • $CLARIVE_BASE/tmp: 50 GB (depending on the number of jobs and size of applications) Recommended to share between the two machines (NFS, SAN, etc?)
    • $CLARIVE_BASE/logs: 20 GB
    • $GIT_BASE/repo: 500 GB (depending on the size of the application repositories) Recommended to share between the two machines (NFS, SAN, etc?)

Database Server

We recommend having a minimum of 2 separate database servers in your installation, so that the MongoDB database server processes run safely in a replica set for consistency and data replication.

Also, the secondary in the replica set can be used as the Clarive report database, so that demanding report analysis run on the replica engine.

  • MongoDB.Operating system: Linux 64 bits
  • Cores: 8
  • RAM: 16 GB
  • Disk:
    • $MONGO_BASE/data: 300 GB
    • $MONGO_BASE/logs: 20 GB

Agents Support

Operating systems

  • Linux 2.4 or higher: Red Hat, Centos, Debian, OpenSUSE
  • IBM AIX 4 or higher
  • HP-UX
  • Oracle Sun Solaris / SunOS
  • IBM ZOS (OS-390) / IBM USS (OMVS)
  • Windows Server 2000 or higher
  • OSX, BSD or compatible