Opening the Vault doors Summary This document looks at hosting and access control for the Altium Vault. The Altium Vault forms the heart of Altium’s smart data management technologies. A separate product in its own right, it is designed to run in conjunction with Altium Designer to provide a complete electronics data release management system for organizations of any size. Vaults bridge the design world and the worlds of fabrication, assembly, procurement, and more. Vaults provide managed repositories for design data, and allow formal revision and life-cycle management of components and data used in a design. Vaults also provide intelligent links to the supply chain to give real-time information about the parts specified in a design. And Vaults provide a mechanism to easily and securely share the right pieces of design data with those who need access to them, both inside and outside a design organization. Altium's vault technology comes in a single flavor, formally known as the Satellite Vault Server, or more commonly Satellite Vault. This paper takes a look at the Altium Vault technology, and the connection between the Vault and AltiumLive. Anatomy of a Vault Implemented as a server-based software application, running on your LAN, an Altium Vault stores and manages electronic design data. The items in vaults represent reusable design content, components and released designs for fabrication of bareboards and assembled boards. These items are constructed from named revisions of data, generated by "release" from the design-side of the organization, but also available to other areas of the organization such as manufacturing and procurement. Version (v1.1) May 25, 2012 1 Opening the Vault doors The Satellite Vault The Satellite Vault is a server application that runs on a network computer. A user can install and run a Satellite Vault on their local machine, which can then act like any other server machine. User and identity management processes are performed through AltiumLive using a person’s AltiumLive credentials. Satellite Vaults are available as a benefit of Altium Subscription. A Satellite Vault is automatically registered with your organizational account in AltiumLive. This account holds all the Altium Designer licenses for you company, along with all of the AltiumLive user accounts that have been activated. Everyone who uses the Satellite Vault will be accessing it under their AltiumLive identity, which is the same identity they use to sign-in to Altium Designer. It is important to note that a Satellite Vault itself and the data it contains are hosted on the company’s network, not in AltiumLive. The only access from the Vault to the outside world is purely for authentication of credentials. Authentication uses the same mechanism as used by the Altium Designer application for sign-in, as well as that used by AltiumLive web apps. No data of any sort is visible outside the organization's LAN/WAN/firewall, and Altium has no visibility into Satellite Vaults. The authentication process is stateless, and the system does not hold ports open or require an ongoing connection to AltiumLive after authentication, as user access tokens are cached locally. For Group Administrators of an Altium Account, a listing of all vaults in use by members of the organization can be viewed from within the AltiumLive Dashboard. A vault and its content can be browsed from here. This is made possible by an innovative piece of web technology that is built into the Satellite Vault server installed on the LAN, which combines dynamically with the AltiumLive server pages hosted in the cloud. From a security point of view, only those in your organization will be able to see these servers. While it appears as if the content of the Vaults is available from the Web, it is actually served directly from the local Satellite Vault server (which is a data server + web server) and dynamically combined in the browser with the wrapper content coming from AltiumLive. The Satellite Vault is initially set to workgroup sharing, which means everyone in your AltiumLive account/organization will have read/write access. To restrict access you need to change the setting to full enterprise security, and then change folder sharing rights within the vault. Version (v1.1) May 25, 2012 2 Opening the Vault doors It is important (and reassuring) to note that a Vault Server can always be accessed by opening Altium Designer and connecting to it on the same physical computer on which it is installed and running. This can be done by different users. When a different user signs in to Altium Designer on the same computer, and connects to the vault, they become a local administrator of that Vault Server instance. This means that if the previous owner leaves the organization, or there is a disconnection from the Internet (and hence, connection to Altium’s Identity Service), then the vault can still be used and accessed at least at a local level. To access a Satellite Vault remotely from another computer on the network, a user must be using licensed Altium Designer software with valid Altium Subscription, and be signed-in to their AltiumLive account. The latter is also required if accessing over the internet. In short, a Satellite Vault is an extension of the AltiumLive ecosystem with its data hosted on the company’s network. Satellite Vault Summary: • No capital purchase required, available as a benefit of Altium Subscription. • Vault hosted within company network, all data remains within network • Internet access required for remote access authentication only • Remote access requires Altium Designer license with current Altium Subscription, and signed-in to AltiumLive account • Internet and Altium Subscription not required for ongoing local vault access. Looking to the future Altium Vault technology, combined with Altium Designer, provides opportunities for companies to manage and distribute their design data in ways that were difficult or impossible before. For example, the connection of Satellite Vaults to the growing AltiumLive ecosystem presents a range of opportunities built around the ability to share IP across organizations, including on a commercial basis. Because the Vault systems are all based on a fully lifecycle and revision managed data model (from full design right down to components and models), highly-verified, reusable content for board-level design becomes a real and practical possibility. It also opens up the whole area of saleable and transferable board design content within some form of PCB IP marketplace. Version (v1.1) May 25, 2012 3
