Overview
SCA Overview
The Sendense Central Appliance is the control-plane layer above customer and tenant SHAs for MSP and CSP operating models; backup data never passes through it.
Definition
The SCA is the Sendense Central Appliance: the central control-plane role that runs in the provider or central management environment, above customer or tenant SHA deployments.
The SCA is a control plane only. Customer backup data never passes through it. The SCA is available only to MSP and CSP customers, and it is not a separately-charged device.
SCA And SHA
SHA (Sendense Hub Appliance) remains the hub and orchestration point for protection, recovery, EBA, SNA, and snagent in every deployment shape.
SCA adds provider capabilities; it does not replace the customer's SHA
The SCA sits above customer or tenant SHA deployments and adds provider-level control. It does not replace SHA, which stays the hub for the customer or tenant deployment in every shape.
Two Editions
The SCA is one product offered in two editions. The edition is selected by the customer's own partner license, not by a separate SCA purchase:
MSP Use
In the MSP edition each customer SHA is independent and stays the hub; it is not a tenant of the provider. The SCA provides central telemetry and a delegated staff-permission model for agreed operations across customer SHAs, not a tenant proxy.
Enrollment can be customer-led or MSP-led, depending on the relationship between the MSP and the customer.
CSP Use
In the CSP edition the SCA is the provider platform layer for the tenant front door, provisioning, centralized storage, licensing quota, and metering and billing.
Each tenant is given its own dedicated single-tenant appliance in a one-to-one silo. One tenant's appliance has no access to another tenant's appliance or data.
What The SCA Does
The SCA houses a set of shipped control-plane surfaces that work together above the enrolled appliances:
- Fleet visibility and delegated operations across enrolled appliances.
- A CSP tenant front door and operator console that reuse the real appliance GUI, with per-tenant feature entitlements.
- Provider staff roles, plus tenant and tenant-user administration.
- Provider provisioning and zero-touch tenant onboarding across placement topologies.
- Centralized storage offerings, operational licensing quota, usage metering and billing, and a versioned API.
- A consolidated security and isolation model.
What SCA Is Not
- The SCA is not a SHA, an SNA, or snagent. SHA remains the hub, SNA is the backup proxy, and snagent is the CloudStack KVM hypervisor host agent that runs on the host, not inside the protected VM.
- The SCA is not itself an EBA repository and never stores backup data, but it can catalog and assign storage offerings to tenant appliances.
- The SCA is not a license signer. License signing stays central; the SCA applies and enforces licensing but does not issue or sign licenses.
- The SCA is self-hosted by the provider; a Sendense-hosted SCA is not currently offered.
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