Advantages, Disadvantages, and Process to Transition to Enterprise Architecture
Author: Eric Vasbinder
Applicable ERPs
Vista
Advantages
How do I qualify
How does it get turned on?
Customers of our Vista ERP solution range from small, 5-10 user customers with only a few million in revenue every year, all the way up to substantial, publicly traded organizations with hundreds of ERP users and multiple billions of dollars in revenue every year.
For the most part, the standard architecture used for customers in our cloud is quite effective, providing a good balance of performance and efficiency. However, for some of our largest customers, an enhanced, horizontally scaled architecture is recommended to allow for faster processing of reports, payroll batches, AP analysis, and integrations to third party analytics and reporting tools.
To that end, back in 2020, we created the Enterprise Architecture deployment model for our hosted Vista ERP customers. This architecture, available to customers meeting certain criteria, provides a substantially enhanced and distributed hardware footprint for our most demanding customer use cases.
To understand why Enterprise Architecture is beneficial for our most demanding customers, we must first understand the Standard architecture used for cloud environments.
The standard architecture for the Vista ERP cloud consists of the following components:
The "D1" box: A combined Vista server containing: Vista database, Vista Attachments Database, Vista Application, a Crystal Reports engine, and User Profiles.
The "D2" box: The Vista Web (formerly Keystyle or HFF) application and web server
The "VRL" box: The reverse proxy server that enables Vista Remote Link to provide HTTPS based conductivity for Vista rich clients into the Vista database when hosted in our cloud
The "MS1" or "TS1" box: The Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) or RDP Terminal Services box. For use when end users need lower latency access to the Vista client itself when connecting from connections with substandard latencies above 30-40ms, such as satellite internet (e.g. Starlink).
As you can see, based on the above architectural description, though the environment is architected effectively for small to medium-size customers, larger customers may find that the "D1" box can be overwhelmed if subjected to substantively large queries, batch processing, or simultaneous activity. Over 95% of our customer base will never experience issues with standard architecture. However, for those customers whose Vista activity level necessitates it, enterprise architecture provides significantly more horsepower and scale to accommodate those needs.
The Enterprise Architecture option for the Vista ERP cloud consists of the following components:
The "-DB1" box: This is a dedicated virtual machine, allocated specifically only to house the Vista records and attachments database instances
The "-APP" box: This is a dedicated virtual machine, allocated specifically only to house the Vista application server
The "-CN1" box: This is a dedicated virtual machine, allocated specifically to only how's the Crystal Reports engine.
Please note that some environments may have up to three additional Crystal Reports nodes in a cluster ("-CN2", "-CN3", "-CN4"), depending upon the level of Crystal reporting demand present in the environment.
The "D1" box: Providing support for User Profiles.
The "D2" box: The Vista Web (formerly Keystyle or HFF) application and web server
The "VRL" box: The reverse proxy server that enables Vista Remote Link to provide HTTPS based conductivity for Vista rich clients into the Vista database when hosted in our cloud
The "MS1" or "TS1" box: The Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) or RDP Terminal Services box. For use when end users need lower latency access to the Vista client itself when connecting from connections with substandard latencies above 30-40ms, such as satellite internet (e.g. Starlink).
As you can see, based on the above architectural details, the Enterprise Architecture deployment model enables us to split the processing of database queries from application logic, as well as moving the processing of Crystal reports from the application and database server. This allows us to horizontally scale the operations of Vista, as well as allowing for more clean and efficient allocation of resources during heavy operations.
Enterprise Architecture has a number of caveats and changes that will occur when moving to this new deployment model.
Move Vista to a Completely new Environment
Due to the significant differences in the naming and internal structure of EA environments as opposed to standard environments, using EA requires that Trimble set up a brand new, Enterprise Architecture environment, to which customers can move
New DB server name and IP
Due to the move to a completely new environment, there will be a new server name and static, private IP.
This requires that all third party applications that are pointing to the current Vista DB IP be repointed to the new static IP.
Test Reports and Third Party Applications
As this process is, in effect, like a miniature transformation, there is a need for a full testing cycle to review custom reports, third party applications, and other tools to ensure they work properly with the new server environment.
Moving to EA requires creating a brand new, EA environment for the customer and then moving the customer's Vista instance to that new environment. This new EA environment has a larger footprint and associated significantly increased costs for Trimble. In addition, the Enterprise Architecture solution itself only provides performance benefits to customers of a certain size and level of activity and higher.
As such, there are certain requirements that must be met in order for a customer to qualify to be upgraded to Enterprise Architecture. First and foremost is that any customer who wishes to move to enterprise architecture MUST purchase an upgrade to the Bronze tier or higher of the Enterprise Solution Bundle (ESB) for Vista, known as the Vista Enterprise Infrastructure and Support (VEIS), or VEIS ESB.
The following are the high level tasks to move to Enterprise Architecture (EA):
Customer and Trimble Account Team: Ensure you have purchased the Bronze or higher Tier of the ESB.
Trimble: Stand up brand new EA environment.
Trimble: Coordinate with customer to begin project to move to Enterprise Architecture.
Trimble and Customer: Set up weekly migration calls for the prroject to migrate to EA.
Trimble and Customer: Begin testing of end user workflows, reports, etc. as well as third party integrations into the new EA environment.
Trimble and Customer: Once all critical functions have been tested and approved as working in the new, pre-production EA environment, schedule time to perform final data copy into new environment.
Trimble: Perform final data copy into new EA environment. Turn off old servers. Perform final QA checks.
Customer: Perform final QA validation with internal IT / QA staff.
Customer: Hand off new EA environment to end users.
Customer and Trimble: Coordinate with post-cut over issue tracking and correction, meeting at least 1x per week for two weeks post cut over.
changelog
Thursday, 23 April 2026 at 02:46PM:
Initial Posting