What is Informatica Cloud Secure Agent?

Consider you have a customer database which is residing within your Organization’s firewall.

You wanted to migrate the data into a cloud based application like Salesforce using Informatica Cloud Data Integration.

You have established connections to both source and target applications in Informatica Cloud and built a task to load the data. But the entire Source and Target metadata, Mapping, Connections and Logging information is stored in the Informatica Cloud Repository which is outside you organization’s firewall.

The IICS repository is maintained completely by Informatica unlike the on-premise tools like Powercenter where repository is maintained by the user. Hence the users do not have any direct access to the metadata stored in Informatica repository.

How do you securely access the metadata of your Org from IICS repository and run the jobs within your company’s firewall?

This is where Secure Agent comes into picture.

What is Informatica Cloud Secure Agent?

Informatica Cloud Secure Agent is a light weight, self-upgrading program that you need to install in your server and register it with Informatica Cloud repository using the unique registration code provided for your organization account. It runs all tasks and enables secure communication across the firewall between your organization and Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services.

Without registering the secure agent, you will not be able to access the metadata of your Org from IICS Repository or data from your local resources or even run tasks.

What are the functions of Informatica Cloud Secure Agent?

• Secure Agent is responsible for securely communicating between the Informatica Cloud Repository, other cloud based applications and your local resources.
• Secure Agent acts as a local agent on your server that runs all the tasks and is responsible for moving data from source to target.
• Secure Agent allows you to access all your local resources like databases, files and applications that reside beside your company firewall.
• While processing data through Secure Agent, your source application data never gets staged or run through Informatica Cloud servers. Your data remains secure and behind your company firewall.

How Informatica Cloud Secure Agent works?

The Secure Agent uses pluggable microservices for data processing. Each service available under a secure agent is a microservice which has its unique functionalities and capabilities.

For example, the Data Integration Server runs all data integration jobs. Process Server runs application integration and process orchestration jobs. 

The below image shows the various services available under Secure Agent. The services available under a secure agent depends upon the licenses acquired by your Organization.

Microservices are built on an architectural style that allows building applications as a collection of small autonomous services developed for a specific business goal.

• Microservices are loosely coupled so that changes made in one does not affect the other.
• Fault isolation is easy. Even if one service goes down, other can continue to function.
• More hardware resources could be allocated to the service that is frequently used.
• Change in the data model of one Microservice does not affect other Microservices.

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