Using CA AppLogic® › Appliance Developer Guide › Appliance Kit › Appliance Boundary

Appliance Boundary

This chapter provides information that describes a CA AppLogic® appliance.

Overview / General

A CA AppLogic® virtual appliance (or simply, appliance) specifies an instance of an OS installation or another self-contained executable entity that can run as an i386 (or x86_64) virtual machine. An appliance has the following characteristics:

• Contains the executable code on one or more volume images, formatted either as a PC x86 bootable hard disk, or as single disk partitions.
• Configures itself (network, properties, and so on) using the dhcp-based protocol.
• Reports success or failure to the CA AppLogic® grid upon startup using a utility that CA Technologies provides.
• If used as part of a CA AppLogic® application, communicates with other appliances using peer-to-peer IPv4 connections - the CA AppLogic® equivalent of a direct link between two Ethernet ports.
• All configurable settings of the appliance are in the form of properties - that is, named parameters, each one with a defined type chosen from the types supported by CA AppLogic® and optionally a defined range of valid values. The property types currently supported by CA AppLogic® include string, integer, and IP address.

Note: CA AppLogic® also supports a legacy appliance, which is not configured over the network and requires its volumes to be modified off line prior to start. This type of appliance is not covered by the present document.

This section contains the following topics:

Exterior Boundary

Interior Boundary