Config Files

Reference Information › User Interface Reference Guide › Graphical User Interface › Class Editor -- Simple Appliances › Config Files

Config Files

The Configuration Files property sheet lets you define a set of files on the appliance volumes that you want CA AppLogic® to modify. All property values set on the appliance instance will propagate to these files. Such files, for example, would be httpd.conf for Apache web server appliance, my.cnf for MySQL database appliance, and so on.

Note: The Configuration Files property sheet is only supported if the configuration mode for the appliance is set to volfix. If the configuration mode for the appliance is set to dhcp, configuration settings must be handled internally by the appliance.

For each configuration file you want CA AppLogic® to modify, add an entry in this list.

Volume

The appliance volume where the configuration file resides. Typically this is the boot volume, but in some cases you may want to have the a configuration file on a data volume. CA AppLogic® can modify config files on instantiable and placeholder volumes that are not read-only.

Path

The path to the configuration file that needs to be modified, relative to the root of the volume. For example, this may be /etc/my.cnf for MySQL's config file.

Quoting Method

The method that CA AppLogic® will use to quote meta-characters in the value. A "meta-character" is any character that has a special meaning in the config file and must be quoted (or "escaped") in some manner to appear as a data character and not in its special-function role. Based on the type of configuration file you have, the quoting method can be set to one of the following values:

None or Conf - no quoting (default). The value is stored in the config file as is.
Bash, Perl or C - data values that are enclosed by quotes are assumed to use \" to mean the quote character and \\ to mean the backslash. Backslashes that don't quote a " or \ character are left untouched, that is, if you set a property value to "abc\def"ghi\n", the result written into the config file is "abc\\def\"ghi\n". Values that are not surrounded by quotes are limited to alphanumeric characters. An error is reported if such a property is set to a value with other characters, even if the filter for that property allows it.
HTML - the characters that have significance in the HTML syntax (< > " and &) are encoded as < > &quot and &. For example, abc&def<ghi becomes abc&def<ghi in the config file.

Note:

You can change the order in the list by selecting an entry and using the up and down buttons on the right side of the list.
For CA AppLogic® to properly modify the configuration files and know where to apply the instance property values, you need to have those configuration files instrumented using the Property Markup Syntax. See the Appliance Creation Guide for more details.
In addition to configuration files you add here, CA AppLogic® also puts all property values in a small shell script file named /etc/applogic.sh. You can use that file from shell scripts via the source /etc/applogic.sh command. See the Appliance Creation Guide for more details.

Resources

The Resources tab allows you to specify the amount of hardware resources that are needed for each instance of this appliance. You can select amount of CPU (percentage of a full CPU), memory and bandwidth needed by the appliance.

Resource types and specification

The following resource types can be specified:

CPU

Portion of a CPU to be allocated for each instance. Portions can be specified as a percentage of 1 CPU (for example, 10%) or as a decimal number (0.10).
See the corresponding appliance topic in the Appliance Catalog Reference Guide for the appliance Minimum, Maximum, and Default values.

Memory

Amount of memory to be allocated for each instance. The amount can be specified as an integer value in Megabytes (for example, 128M) or in Gigabytes (for example, 2G). For 32-bit Linux appliances, the memory should be at least 32M and no more than 3G.

Bandwidth

Amount of network bandwidth to be allocated for each instance. The amount can be specified as an integer value in Megabits/sec (for example, 10M) or in Gigabits/sec (for example, 1G). The maximum amount of bandwidth for a simple appliance is 2G (a full duplex Gigabit Ethernet port).

As an administrator, you can enable the oversubscription of network bandwidth on a grid for the backbone or internal network. If enabled, appliances can use more bandwidth than their configured network bandwidth.

If disabled, the maximum network bandwidth for each appliance is based on its configured network bandwidth . When the appliance closely approaches the configured bandwidth, network packets are randomly dropped for that appliance. As long as the used appliance bandwidth exceeds the configured bandwidth, all network packets are dropped for that appliance.

The enabled state of the resource oversubscription for bandwidth is displays on the dashboard. For additional information on setting oversubscription, refer to the Command Line Shell Reference Guide,

Resource ranges

You can specify a range for each resource type. The range defines the normal operating parameters desired for the appliance, and minimum resource requirements for sandbox use.

Minimum: The absolute minimum amount of a resource that the appliance needs to work at all. This is useful to allow running the appliance in functional testing environments, where the appliance is not expected to run under production load and can run with much less resources. Contrast this with the Default below, which is amount of resources needed for production use.
Maximum: The maximum amount of a resource that the appliance will be allowed to take. Typically this is the maximum that an appliance can use (that is, giving it more resources will not increase performance). The appliance will not be allocated more than the specified maximum amount, helping ensure that the appliance will not be able to take resources away from other appliances -- think of it as a quota.
Default: The minimum amount of a resource that the appliance requires for normal operation in production environments. The appliance will not be started unless at least that much can be allocated for it (likely failing the start of the application as a whole). Specifying a minimum helps ensure that the appliance will work within certain "guaranteed" resource amount -- think of it as a service level agreement (SLA) for that resource.

Notes

Leave the broadest reasonable range for all resources. The amount of resources actually allocated for an instance of the appliance can be further constrained by the instance settings of the appliance.
The degree, to which the resource ranges are enforced varies, based on the underlying virtualization technology used by CA AppLogic®.
In this release, the CPU minimum is guaranteed and the maximum is enforced only if other appliances need the CPU; the memory minimum and maximum are strictly enforced; the bandwidth minimum and maximum are not enforced at all -- they are used only to make scheduling decisions. As a result, it is guaranteed that an appliance will get its minimum CPU and memory. It may not get its full bandwidth, if another appliance is scheduled on the same server and hogs the bandwidth. We expect the bandwidth guarantee to be provided in a future version. In the meantime, we can help devising a solution for particular problems you may have with this limitation.