Informatica has a service-oriented architecture that provides the ability to scale services and share resources across multiple machines. High availability functionality helps minimize service downtime due to unexpected failures or scheduled maintenance in the Informatica environment.

The Informatica domain is the fundamental administrative unit in Informatica. The domain supports the administration of the distributed services. A domain is a collection of nodes and services that you can group in folders based on administration ownership.

A node is the logical representation of a machine in a domain. One node in the domain acts as a gateway to receive service requests from clients and route them to the appropriate service and node. Services and processes run on nodes in a domain. The availability of a service or process on a node depends on how you configure the service and the node.

The Administrator tool consolidates the administrative tasks for domain objects. You manage the domain and the security of the domain through the Administrator tool.

The Informatica domain is the fundamental administrative unit in Informatica. The domain supports the administration of the distributed services. A domain contains a node and services.

A node is the logical representation of a machine in a domain. The node acts as a gateway to receive service requests from clients and route them to the appropriate service. Services and processes run on the node in a domain. The availability of a service or process on a node depends on how you configure the service and the node.

Services for the domain include the Service Manager and a set of application services:

Services for the domain include the Service Manager and Ultra Messaging Service:

Service Manager. A service that runs on each node in the domain to manage all domain operations. The Service Manager performs domain functions such as authentication, authorization, and logging. The Service Manager also starts the application services configured to run on the node.
Ultra Messaging Service. An application service that runs on a node.

The Service Manager and application services control security. The Service Manager manages users and groups that can log in to application clients and authenticates the users who log in to the application clients. The Service Manager and application services authorize user requests from application clients.

Informatica Administrator (the Administrator tool), consolidates the administrative tasks for domain objects such as services, nodes, licenses, and grids. You manage the domain and the security of the domain through the Administrator tool.

If you have the high availability option, you can scale services and eliminate single points of failure for services. Services can continue running despite temporary network or hardware failures.