Architecture

In Sitefinity NextGen, the Sitefinity CMS application is provided as a service that is fully managed by Progress Software (SaaS setup). Each Sitefinity NextGen subscription (project) hosts a single decoupled Renderer application that has a single codebase.

When purchasing a Sitefinity NextGen subscription, each customer gets their dedicated organization and each subscription corresponds to a project in that organization. If a customer purchases additional Sitefinity NextGen subscriptions, these are added as extra projects.

Sitefinity NextGen operates on a multitenancy architecture, where each environment for each customer subscription (project) has separate application and database resources, along with other dedicated Azure resources.
Sitefinity NextGen provides a predefined deployment with two environments - Authoring and Production.

By default, all resources are replicated or distributed across the supported availability zones automatically. This ensures high availability and redundancy for the deployed applications in cases of natural disasters or data center outages.

In a default setup, each Sitefinity NextGen project includes Authoring and Production environments.
A decoupled ASP.NET Core Renderer application is deployed consecutively to both environments via a preconfigured CI/CD pipeline (available in Sitefinity NextGen Management Portal).
Each Sitefinity NextGen environment is isolated and scales automatically to ensure optimal performance and high availability.
This setup enables content editors to make content changes that can be previewed and tested on the Authoring environment without affecting the Production environment.

The following diagram is a high-level representation of a Sitefinity NextGen setup, focusing on the predefined environments and the integration between them:

Authoring environment

This environment is designed for content editors to create content and sync their content changes to the Production environment (via preconfigured Site Sync functionality).

When working in the backend of the Authoring environment and performing a Publish operation on content items or pages, Sitefinity NextGen automatically promotes the changes to the Production environment. Respectively, when you perform the Unpublish operation on a content item or page, it automatically becomes unpublished in both environments' frontend.
For more information, see Content lifecycle.

This environment can also be used for local development through the decoupled ASP.NET Core Renderer application. For more information, see Set up the project for local development and Deploy code changes.

Production environment

The Production environment serves the published content to your site visitors.
Content editors can access only the frontend of the Production environment and site visitors can access the published content via your website's public URL.

Deploying code customizations to the Authoring environment and then to Production is done via a preconfigured CI/CD pipeline for the ASP.NET Core Renderer application.

The Management Portal layer of Sitefinity NextGen is based on Microsoft Azure DevOps. It provides a user interface to allow working with the project’s management tools.

The Sitefinity NextGen Management Portal includes:

• Source Control / Repos
  Using the Management Portal, Sitefinity NextGen users can directly access their project repositories.
  • A repository for the source code for the ASP.NET Core Renderer application is automatically provisioned.
  Each code repository supports the full functionality available in Azure DevOps Repos, including a variety of features such as git repository, code reviews, pull requests, and more.
  
• Pipelines
  Sitefinity NextGen provides preconfigured pipelines enabling you to manage your website's development cycle according to the best practices. You can view the pipeline execution steps and logs by clicking on the pipeline name in your project's Pipelines section. The functionality is delivered on top of Azure DevOps Pipelines.
  • DotNetCoreRenderer.CI.CD - Use this pipeline to deploy the ASP.NET Core Renderer application
    Out-of-the-box Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) processes that enable you to test and release new functionality at the click of a button. Releases can be easily traced and there is an interface for manual approval of deployment to specific environments. Moreover, in cases where the system fails to start after a package has been deployed, an automatic rollback is triggered to restore the system to the previously running state.
    
  • DotNetCoreRenderer.Restart - Use this pipeline to restart the ASP.NET Core Renderer on any environment with zero downtime and without the need to re-deploy. The restart utilizes a similar approach as the blue-green deployment process to ensure there is no downtime for the application.
    
• User Management
  The Users section of the Management Portal enables you to invite new users to the project. Additionally, project administrators can configure Sitefinity roles for users to control what data is accessible and manageable by them.
  For more information, see User management.
• Boards
  The Boards section of the Management Portal provides a hub for organizing teamwork by utilizing the built-in scrum boards, backlogs, planning tools, and ability to link code changes with work items. Boards also include powerful analytics tools and dashboard widgets that allow you to gain insights into the health and status of your project.
• Wiki
  The Wiki section of the Management Portal is the central hub for organizing and sharing useful information with the team working on the project. For example, customers can add release notes, product documentation, and shortcuts to important areas that should be available to everyone working with the project in the Sitefinity NextGen Management Portal. The Wiki hub supports Markdown as well as all other features outlined in Azure DevOps Wiki. The Welcome page is the home page of your project's wiki.
  

The following regions are currently supported for Sitefinity NextGen:

NOTE: More Sitefinity NextGen regions will be added over time, with subsequent releases of the product.