---
title: "Roles overview"
slug: "roles-overview"
abstract: "Overview of the more than 50 Sitecore logical roles organized by product, type and combination."
---
# Roles overview
The entire Sitecore product suite contains over 50 logical system roles or entities that can be scaled and configured in a wide variety of topologies to form a running Sitecore solution catering to specific business needs or requirements.
The logical roles can be grouped and described from different perspectives depending on the objective:
- **By product** - where roles are grouped by the product which they are licensed and installed with and in which they are primarily used. This is the way this documentation is structured.
- **By type** - where roles are grouped by their usage or technology. For example, do they run business logic or do they store data.
- **By combination** - for scalability or simplicity reasons, some logical roles can be combined to form single running entities in a topology. This is typically application roles sharing codebases, but can also be storage roles.
Roles by product
### Sitecore Experience Manager (XM)
The following roles belong to Sitecore Experience Manager:
### Sitecore Experience Platform (XP)
The following roles belong to Sitecore Experience Platform:
### Sitecore Experience Commerce (XC)
The following roles belong to Sitecore Experience Commerce:
### Other products
- Connectors - Data Exchange Framework. Logically belongs in XM as it has no dependency on other parts of the system. However, the framework installs as a separate product and specific connectors may depend on XP or XC.
- Cloud Services - Logically belongs in the XM/XP/XC products as they are used from these products.
Roles by type
Each of the services in the Sitecore architecture can implement a number of logical roles or entities, spanning across the following four groups:
- **Storage roles** – store the data of the Sitecore platform, for example, content, media, or customer information. These roles are typically databases, but can also be more transient storage providers, for example, in-memory data stores. The data in these roles are stored either permanently or temporarily, for example, data waiting for processing.
- **Application roles** – host the business logic of the system. These can be split into two subdivisions:
- **Web Roles** – deliver output to visitors or administrators or to calling applications – in other words websites or web services with API endpoints.
- **Worker Roles** – await changes to data in the storage roles and execute business logic to transform and/or transfer the data to other storage roles or indexes.
- **Indexes** – optimize the finding of relevant data using queries. The indexes are maintained and used by the application roles and typically catalog the data stored in the storage roles.
- **Cloud services** – services hosted by Sitecore in the cloud and are accessed by the application roles. The Sitecore Cloud services are not technically part of the product architectures, but are software-as-a-service offerings available through the licensing of the products or on separate subscriptions.
Roles by combination
Some logical roles share a codebase and can be run as a single, combined web applications. For example, the pre-built XP Single topology combines all core roles and all XP service roles. Some databases can also be combined. Refer to the **Support combinations** section of each role for a list of supported combinations and caveats, or use the following links.
### Core roles
Refer to the Architecture and roles documentation for information about which of the following core roles can be combined:
- [Content Management](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/content-management--cm-.html "Content Management (CM)")
- [Content Delivery](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/content-delivery--cd-.html "Content Delivery (CD)")
- [EXM Dispatch](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/exm-dispatch.html "EXM Dispatch")
- [xDB Processing](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/xdb-processing.html "xDB Processing")
> [!note]
> In Sitecore 10.1 and later, the xDB Reporting role has been combined with the Content Management role.
### XP service roles
Refer to the Architecture and roles documentation for information about which of the following XP service roles can be combined:
- [xConnect Collection](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/xconnect-collection-service.html "xConnect Collection service")
- [xConnect Collection Search](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/xconnect-collection-search-service.html "xConnect Collection Search service")
- [Marketing Automation Reporting](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/marketing-automation-reporting-service.html "Marketing Automation Reporting service")
- [Marketing Automation Operations](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/marketing-automation-operations-service.html "Marketing Automation Operations service")
- [Reference Data Service](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/reference-data-service.html "Reference Data service")
- [xConnect Search Indexer](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/xconnect-search-indexer.html "xConnect Search Indexer")
- [Marketing Automation Engine](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/marketing-automation-engine.html "Marketing Automation Engine")
- [Sitecore Cortex Processing Engine](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/sitecore-cortex-processing-engine.html "Sitecore Cortex Processing Engine")
- [Sitecore Cortex Processing service](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/sitecore-cortex-processing-service.html "Sitecore Cortex Processing service")
- [Sitecore Cortex Reporting service](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/sitecore-cortex-reporting-service.html "Sitecore Cortex Reporting service")
### Commerce Engine roles
Refer to the Architecture and roles documentation for information about which of the following Commerce Engine roles can be combined:
- [Shops](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/shops.html "Shops")
- [Authoring](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/authoring.html "Authoring")
- DevOps
- [Minions](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/minions.html "Minions")
### Standalone roles
The roles cannot be combined with any other roles and must run as a standalone web application:
- [Content Publishing](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/content-publishing--publishing-.html "Content Publishing (Publishing)")
- [Universal Tracker Collection service](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/universal-tracker-collection-service.html "Universal Tracker Collection service")
- [Universal Tracker Processing service](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/universal-tracker-processing-service.html "Universal Tracker Processing service")
- [Sitecore Identity Server](https://doc.sitecore.com/xp/en/developers/102/platform-administration-and-architecture/sitecore-identity-server.html "Sitecore Identity Server")