Lamp - Lamp and LampX4 Applications

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Lamp - Lamp and LampX4 Applications

Lamp - 2-tier Non-scalable Web Application

Latest Version: 1.2.12-1

Lamp - 2-tier Non-scalable Web Application

LampX4 - Scalable Lamp Web Application

Latest Version: 1.2.12-1

LampX4 - Scalable Lamp Web Application

This section contains the following topics:

Functional Overview

The Lamp and LampX4 reference applications are simple 2-tier Web applications that make it easy for a user to port their applications onto CA AppLogic®. These reference applications drastically reduce the entry barrier for using CA AppLogic® grids.

The Lamp application consists of a single web server, a database server, a file server, a gateway for external network access and an input gateway for user access. In addition, the application contains a monitor which allows the administrator to monitor various aspects of the application (for example, CPU/memory usage, hit rate on a website, and so on).

LampX4 is the same as Lamp except it provides a load-balanced web tier; a load balancer plus 4 web servers. LampX4 is designed for applications that incur heavy traffic load (that is, may be accessed by hundreds of users).

With these Lamp applications, in only a few simple steps, the user can port their application onto CA AppLogic® with ease. Simply provision one of the Lamp applications, SSH into the web server (via the CA AppLogic® web shell), install the necessary software and the application is ready for production.

Lamp and LampX4 are made for simple applications that do not require:

Any build tools such as GCC
Write access to the usr directory in the web servers

For applications that do not fit within these requirements, the LampCluster reference application should be used instead.

Boundary

This section contains the following topics:

Properties

Resources

Application Volumes

Properties

Property Name	Type	Description
hostname	String	Host name under which the Lamp application is accessible. This is the name that users point their browsers at: http://hostname/. This name should resolve to the IP address specified in in_ip. Default: (empty; no hostname is used).
in_ip	IP	This is the IP address at which the Lamp application provides services to users. If the hostname property is not empty, it should resolve to in_ip. This property is mandatory.
out_ip	IP	This is the IP address that is used by the Lamp application to access an external network that resides outside of the application (that is, the internet). This property is mandatory.
netmask	IP	Network mask for the network on which in_ip and out_ip reside. This property is mandatory.
gateway	IP	Defines the IP network gateway (router) that is used for all outgoing traffic to the external network via in_ip and out_ip. This property is mandatory.
dns1	IP	IP address of the primary DNS server used for host name resolutions. This property is mandatory.
dns2	IP	IP address of the backup DNS server used for host name resolutions. Default: (empty; not used).
timezone	String	Specifies the time zone used in the application. If this property is empty, the timezone is not modified and left as-is. A list of supported time zones is available here. Default: empty
mon_standby	Int	Determines whether application monitoring is disabled upon application start for the Lamp application. If non-zero, monitoring is disabled, otherwise monitoring is enabled. The monitoring can be enabled at runtime by manually starting the mon appliance. Default: 1 (monitoring is disabled).
srv2_standby	Int	Specifies whether the second WEB server is in standby mode. If non-zero, the second WEB server is in standby mode, otherwise it is not in standby mode. This property is valid only for the LampX4 application. Default: 1 (standby mode).
srv3_standby	Int	Specifies whether the third WEB server is in standby mode. If non-zero, the third WEB server is in standby mode, otherwise it is not in standby mode. This property is valid only for the LampX4 application. Default: 1 (standby mode).
srv4_standby	Int	Specifies whether the fourth WEB server is in standby mode. If non-zero, the fourth WEB server is in standby mode, otherwise it is not in standby mode. This property is valid only for the LampX4 application. Default: 1 (standby mode).

Important! The IP addresses configured in the in_ip and out_ip properties must be IP addresses available on your CA AppLogic® grid. You can find them, together with the netmask, gateway and DNS servers on the dashboard of your grid. We are working to make it possible for CA AppLogic® to provide these addresses automatically

Resources

Lamp

Resource	Minimum	Maximum	Default
CPU	0.45	60	1.15
Memory	960 MB	102 GB	1.781 GB
Bandwidth	6 Mbps	10.5 Gbps	950 Mbps

LampX4

Resource	Minimum	Maximum	Default
CPU	0.85	124	2.85
Memory	1.5 GB	230 GB	3.28 GB
Bandwidth	10 Mbps	18.5 Gbps	1.4 Gbps

Application Volumes

Application Volumes

The application itself uses several volumes. They are part of the application and are already configured into the appliance instances.

Volume	Description
mysql	Volume for the database data storage. This volume is assigned to the MYSQL appliance. By default, an empty volume named mysql is supplied for the application to use.
fs	This volume is used to store the Lamp application's web pages, code and scripts (plus anything else that is needed by the application). It is also used to store the web server and database logs. This volume is assigned to the NAS appliance. By default, an empty volume named fs is supplied for the application to use.
mon	This volume is used to store monitoring data for the application. There is no reason for the user to access/modify this volume; this volume is used internally by the MON appliance. By default, a volume named mon is supplied to store the application monitoring data.

Operation

This section describes how to use and operate the Lamp applications. It is geared towards both administrators and regular CA AppLogic® users. The initial setup and maintenance of the Lamp applications requires access to a CA AppLogic® grid.

Lamp and LampX4 are designed to allow the user to quickly port their application over to CA AppLogic®. Lamp and LampX4 are both used in the same way. All instructions in this section apply to both Lamp applications.

This section contains the following topics:

Initial Application Setup

Install Your Application

Monitor Your Application

Initial Application Setup

Use the following steps to get your own Lamp application up and running on a CA AppLogic® grid. This example creates a scalable Lamp application based on LampX4 named mylampapp.

To create a scalable Lamp application

Provision the Lamp application using the command below.
This command provisions a new Lamp application named mylampapp based on the LampX4 reference application. All properties are set to their appropriate values (IPs, DNS servers, and so on). All 4 web servers are enabled to accommodate for possible heavy traffic loads. Also, the sizes of the fs and mysql volumes are increased to 250MB.
```
app provision LampX4 mylampapp hostname=www.myapp.com in_ip=1.2.3.4 out_ip=1.2.3.5 netmask=255.255.255.0 gateway=1.2.3.1 dns1=1.2.3.50 dns2=1.2.3.51 mon_standby=0 srv2_standby=0 srv3_standby=0 srv4_standby=0 fs.size=250MB mysql.size=250MB 
```
CA AppLogic® will provision the mylampapp application and start it on the grid.
Wait for the application to start; this may take several minutes.
You can now access your application using a browser.
Open up a browser and point it to the configured hostname and you will see a test web page from the Apache web server. If you do not see a test page, verify your IP addresses are configured correctly and restart the application if needed.
You now have a running Lamp application on your grid.
Install your specific application onto the application volumes.
Your application will be ready to go.

Install Your Application

Lamp and LampX4 applications are designed to allow you to quickly port your existing applications to a CA AppLogic® grid.

To install your own software on your Lamp application, SSH into the web appliance from within the CA AppLogic® shell: ssh mylampapp:main.srv.srv1

From within the web server, you can now download and install software directly from the internet (as you would typically do if working on your own private server).
If needed, you can also access the MySQL database using the db hostname (for example, mysql -h db). The default database that is set up automatically when the application is first created has sufficient permissions for the root user of any of the web server appliances.
You can use /mnt/fs to store any files/folders you need for your application (this is the path to your fs application volume). This volume is also used to store all of the apache files (/var/www/html is linked to /mnt/fs for example).

Note: After all of your software is installed and configured, there is no need to restart the application (unless the software you installed requires a reboot).

You should now be able to access your application by using the configured hostname or IP address (in_ip).

Monitor Your Application

After your application has started, you can monitor the application by using the monitor GUI accessible through the CA AppLogic® GUI. To monitor your application, do one of the following:

In the applications list GUI page, select your application and click on the "Monitor" button.
Edit your application using the CA AppLogic® infrastructure editor and click the "Monitor" button at the top of the window.

If you started your application with the monitor in standby state, you can manually start it at runtime: comp start mylampapp:main.mon. The monitor must be started before you can access it through the CA AppLogic® GUI.

After the monitor has started, you may now access the monitoring GUI to monitor your application. This is used to monitor CPU/memory usage, number of hits your website is getting, traffic load, and so on.

Notes

The web servers used in the Lamp applications do not have a GCC build environment or a writable usr directory tree. If either of these are needed, it is recommended to use the LampCluster reference application instead of the Lamp/LampX4 applications.

The mon appliance properties are not configured by default; see the MON datasheet on how to configure mon for things like setting the monitor title, enabling background alarms, and so on.
There is a known incompatibility between the web and mysql servers related to user authentication (SCR 1564). If a mysql user other than root is used in your lamp application, the user must not have an associated password (password authentication does not work due to a mysql client/server version mismatch between the web and mysql server). For more details, see SCR 1564.