Getting Ready › Overview Guide › Introduction to CA AppLogic

Introduction to CA AppLogic

This section contains the following topics:

What is CA AppLogic?

Benefits of CA AppLogic

User Roles

Documentation Reference

What is CA AppLogic?

CA AppLogic is the first grid operating system that runs and scales existing web applications. It converts a set of commodity servers into a scalable grid that's easy to manage. With CA AppLogic, you can:

• Deploy existing web applications on a grid without changing any code
• Scale each application from a fraction of a server up to the whole grid
• Manage whole racks of servers easier than a single server today
• Handle hardware failures automatically without losing data
• Add or remove servers and storage without disrupting applications
• Manage all applications, servers and storage with only a browser

CA AppLogic does not require a SAN or other expensive hardware, and is open and vendor-neutral. It supports Linux and all popular open source middleware including Apache, MySQL, JBoss and Ruby on Rails. In addition, CA AppLogic provides support for both the Xen and ESX hypervisors.

Benefits of CA AppLogic

CA AppLogic does for applications what Apache does for web content. By separating the application from the data center infrastructure required to run it, CA AppLogic makes it possible to:

• Deploy the same web application on different grids
• Run multiple different web applications on the same server
• Scale an application to multiple servers, up to the whole grid
• Manage applications and hardware easily

User Roles

The following describes the User Roles and the associated access levels.

Backbone Administrator

Backbone Administrators perform the following functions:

• Set up the hardware
• Install and configure the BFC
• Staging and testing new hardware and CA AppLogic hotfixes and releases
• Install and reconfigure grids
• Add and remove servers
• Install hotfixes
• Upgrade grid software
• Replace failed hardware

Backbone Administrators typically work on the Backbone Fabric Controller (BFC) and cannot provision or operate applications.

Associated Access Level: Physical hardware access

Note: CA AppLogic has an additional elevated Maintainer (or grid maintainer) administrator role that provides superuser access to the grid controller and grid servers for maintenance purposes. You need only one Maintainer user because this role has full access to the grid, including all data.

Operator

Operators can provision and operate applications on the grid. Operators can also add and remove other grid users and fully operate the grid.

Associated Access Levels: grid_administrator, grid_operator, app_operator, app_developer, and monitor

Architect

Architects build application templates for developers.

Associated Access Level: app_developer

Developer

Developers build appliances and applications.

Associated Access Level: app_developer

Integrators

Integrators use the provided application program interfaces (APIs) to integrate the applications with other applications and services as needed.

Associated Access Level: N/A - External users.

The following diagram shows how User Roles relate to RBAC access levels and the typical interfaces they use.

Documentation Reference

The following describes the CA AppLogic documentation. You may also use the search bar in the upper right corner to search the entire bookshelf for information.