Is the PAMSC / PIM endpoint software supported / Certified running in public cloud environments?

Products

• CA Privileged Identity Management Endpoint (PIM)

Issue/Introduction

Today's server environments often require at least a mix of On-Premise and Cloud Infrastructure machines. Can we install the same PIM or PAMSC endpoints on some or any Cloud Infrastructures? 

Environment

PIM 12.8

PAMSC 14.1

Resolution

Public Cloud based infrastructures like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google GCP and many other customized cloud services offer alot more flexibility and customization than the standard local or On-Premise virtualization platforms.  This creates alot of confusion when someone asks a question like "Can Broadcom support PAMSC in the cloud?". Effectively, the endpoint software is only tested and certified with legacy virtualization methods running a base OS. Because it requires a kernel module to be loaded, we must certify in specific kernel levels and rely on some basic environmental standards like networking. Cloud environments often try to provide for a level of segmentation in the basic services to both ambiguate and replicate the specific portions of an operating system that are required for a task in order to provide more scalability. For example, a local IPv4 address may be the same on 10 virtual machines but externally to each machine a unique external address provides access. The PAMSC endpoint cannot reconcile the difference from the IP it can read from the local machine and the external IP required to identify this machine. For this and other similar concerns with supporting Cloud based machines, we cannot simply say we support running in the cloud even on standardized OS and kernel releases. However, if you have virtual machines running on cloud-based hardware which allows you to run a supported OS version, we can support this in the same fashion as running on a local virtualization platform (similar to VMware in the cloud). If we find there is some customization which causes a deviation from the standard on-premise virtualization we may not be able to assist in a resolution.

This document is meant to clarify any misleading guidance on Cloud based virtualization perceived because PAMSC has not yet certified many of the possible virtualization platforms available. Regardless of whether it is working or not working in any one cloud-based platform, you should request official support that fits your business requirements as an enhancement from your account representative. Please do not open a support ticket to request this as the support organization cannot submit enhancement requests.