Introduction

IBM Aspera Console is a web-based application which allows users to centrally manage, monitor and control Aspera servers (nodes) and transfers. Console offers the following features:

Feature Description
Transfer monitoring and control View transfers, pause / resume / cancel, change transfer rates.
Transfer Initiation Initiate and schedule transfer jobs remotely.
Node Configuration An administrator can configure all nodes directly from Console such for options such as bandwidth, priority, and encryption.
Email Notification Notify users of transfer events with customizable messages.
Reporting Create detail and summary reports of transfer activity.
Role-based access control

Manage what transfers are visible and controllable to Console users with security groups.

Console Nodes

Aspera servers can be added to Console as managed nodes or unmanaged nodes.

Managed nodes can be configured and their transfer activity managed from the Console UI through an SSH connection. The transfer activity of managed nodes is logged to the Console database. For nodes that run an Aspera server application version 3.4.6 or newer ("regular" nodes), Console makes REST calls to the Node API to pull transfer details into console as well as to start and control transfers. For nodes than run older versions of Aspera server applications ("legacy" nodes), Console processes data that gets pushed to the database by the node. Console also communicates with legacy nodes via SOAP calls to start and control transfers and to check for cases where nodes failed to log the end of a transfer.

Unmanged nodes are not under control of Console. These can be used as transfer destinations, but only transfer activity with managed nodes is reported to Console.

The following figure shows the relationship between Console, two managed nodes (Node 1 and Node 2) and an unmanaged node. All transfer activity on the managed nodes, such as Transfer 1, can be monitored and controlled. In contrast, Console is only aware of transfers that are between the unmanaged node and a managed node (for example, Transfer 2 between Node 1 and the unmanaged node).

Console Endpoints

An endpoint is an individual user account on a node (managed or unmanaged) that can perform Aspera transfers without requiring the user to enter credentials in the Console UI. You can have one or multiple endpoints on a node depending on your business needs. The following figure shows a simple endpoint arrangement. Node 1 has two endpoints, Endpoint A (asp1@node1) and Endpoint B (asp2@node1), and Node 2 and Node 3 have one endpoint each (Endpoint C and Endpoint D, respectively). A Console user can run transfers between endpoints from the Consoel UI. For example, Transfer 1 between Endpoint A and Endpoint D, and Transfer 2 between Endpoint B and Endpoint C. Both transfers originate from Node 1, but from different Endpoints and have different destination Endpoints.