# Deployment Options

The Access Anywhere platform is built using a service-oriented or component-based architecture.  Data and application service components can be co-located on a single virtual machine, or deployed as across many nodes. For small to mid-size production environments, the solution is typically deployed as a single virtual machine instance or "software appliance".

This table compares single-node and multi-node deployment options and the impact they have on the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) assuming daily backups of the instance.

^ Deployment ^ Single Node ^ Multiple Nodes (e.g. Multi-AZ) ^
| Nodes	| 1 | 4 minimum (2 app + 2 data) |
| Database | Embedded | Active/Passive |
| Backup Method | Instance Snapshot | Database Backup |
| Recovery Point Objective (RPO) | Application data* – 1 day | Application data* – 0 seconds |
|           | Files/objects – 0 seconds | Files/objects – 0 seconds |
| Recovery Time Objective (RTO) | Several hours | App node - No loss of service |
| | | Data node - Under an hour |

* Application data includes configuration settings, cached storage metadata, user collaboration data (shared links, comments), and activity logs.