Artifacts

Tensor9 enables the secure and reliable deployment of vendor application artifacts (such as container images and models) into customer-connected appliances using Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Artifacts are the essential files needed for your application to run. Tensor9 focuses on two primary artifact kinds:

1. Files in an object store (e.g., S3 objects)
   resource "aws_lambda_function" "example_lambda" {
      function_name = "example-function"
      s3_bucket     = "example-bucket"
      s3_key        = "example-key"
      handler       = "index.handler"
      runtime       = "nodejs24.x"
      role          = aws_iam_role.example_lambda_role.arn
   }
   

2. Container images (stored in ECR)
   resource "kubernetes_manifest" "example_deployment" {
      manifest = {
         "apiVersion" = "apps/v1"
         "kind"       = "Deployment"
         "metadata" = {
            "name"      = "example-deployment"
         }
         "spec" = {
            "replicas" = 2
            "selector" = {
               "matchLabels" = {
                  "app" = "example-app"
               }
            }
            "spec" = {
               "containers" = [{
                  "name"  = "example-container"
                  "image" = "123456789012.dkr.ecr.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/example-image:example-tag"
                  "ports" = [{
                     "containerPort" = 80
                  }]
               }]
            }
         }
      }
   }
   

​

Artifact deployment strategies

Tensor9 supports two primary strategies for moving artifacts from the vendor’s source environment to the customer’s appliance environment: Copy during deployment or direct reference.

​

1. Copy during deployment model: Default and recommended

In the Copy model, the Vendor Controller copies the artifact from the vendor’s source location to a dedicated artifact repository within the customer’s appliance account during the deployment process. In this model, only the Vendor Controller requires read access to the artifacts and the vendor does not have to grant read permissions for each artifact to every appliance.

​

Vendor workflow (container image copy):

1. Your CI/CD builds the container image and publishes it to your origin ECR repository.
2. Your Terraform references the image using its full path/tag in your compute resource definition (e.g., resource.aws_ecs_task_definition.container_definitions[*].image).
3. When you run the Tensor9 build and apply steps, the compiler:
   • Identifies the artifact reference.
   • Creates a process to copy the artifact from your ECR to the appliance’s ECR.
   • Rewrites your compiled infrastructure resource to reference the new, appliance-local ECR path.

​

2. Direct reference model: Override

In the Direct Reference model the artifact is not copied. The appliance is configured to reach out and pull the artifact directly from the vendor’s source location. This model is generally reserved for special cases, such as:

• Publicly accessible artifacts from sources trusted by both the vendor and the customer.
• Extremely large artifacts where minimizing data transfer/copy costs through the Vendor Controller account is critical.
• Artifacts that the vendor only wants to access dynamically at runtime.

​

Copy during deployment details

​

Artifact naming requirements

To ensure immutability and prevent race conditions during deployments, Tensor9 requires all vendor artifacts to be uniquely named and immutable. By enforcing immutable naming, we ensure a deployment to an appliance is always linked to a known-good application version.

​

Supported artifact locations

Tensor9 supports copying artifacts from two locations within the vendor’s control:

​

Out-of-scope artifacts

Tensor9 does not directly manage the following artifact types:

• Secrets (handled by Tensor9 Secret Management)
• Code repositories (GitHub, CodeCommit, etc.)
• Package mirrors (Maven, NPM, etc.)
• Database data

Note: You can, however, export data from these sources as inert files (e.g., a database snapshot) and copy them as S3 objects.