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AppLogic 3.5 New Features

This is to understand the new features in AppLogic 3.5 Beta. These topics provide a preview of the new capabilities of the AppLogic 3.5 Beta.

1. SAN over NFS Support

Why SAN support?

Expand AppLogic's market to include customers who:

• Need higher capacity per node than is feasible with internal drives
• Need higher storage performance or additional storage-specific features
• Have already bought a SAN and/or don't have large hard drives

What is SAN over NFS?

AppLogic grid uses a SAN for volume storage via NFS

• SAN exports an NFS share
• Grid controller and servers mount the NFS share
• Volumes are created on the NFS share

SAN is a server

Appears as a grid server

• Displayed on srv list
• Only used for volume management (no CPU, memory, or network bandwidth)

No management

• AppLogic does not manage or configure the SAN
• Grid maintainer is responsible for:•Setting up the NFS share
• Configuring route(s) to the grid controller and servers
• Enabling any HA features, etc.

SAN and local storage

Local storage can still be used

• Specify where to store volumes through the new store= parameter
• SAN is the default volume store
• Volume migration between the SAN and the grid's local storage and vice versa

2. Quotas

Overview

• Limit resource usage in an AppLogic grid
• 4 resources currently subject to quotas - CPU, MEM, BW, DISK
• Assigned to local and global users and groups
• Unlimited resources by default
• Enforced against object owner
• Warn and burst levels

Quota Hierarchy

• Quotas can be nested - up to 8 levels
• Independent of security model
• Users always subject to their primary group's quota
• Allows service providers to have multiple levels of resellers
• Oversubscription allowed

Quota Management

• Modifying quotas requires grid administrator access
• Viewing quotas accessible to anyone
• CLI
• WEB API

3. Dynamic Canvas - Phase 1

Dynamic Control System

• First step towards being able to change the model without having to restart the IT Service
• Use the Application Editor's architecture view of an IT Service to create a live dashboard of Service's components•Provide ability to view Service component's status in the Editor
• Provide ability to control Service components directly from the Editor
• Essentially, turn the model (IT architecture) into a dynamic control system.

4. New Windows APK (Appliance Kit)

New Windows APK and Base Class Installers

• Easier to install and configure a WinOXy appliance
  • User does not have to run the various manual steps to prepare the appliance
  • Most steps have been automated and are executed during installation of the APKI
• Improved Base Class installers for Windows based Appliances
  • Self executing installers, moved from MSI to EXE. Eg: Server_Windows-3.5.x.exe
  • Windows APK is installed as a pre-requisite
• Standalone APK
  • •Windows APK now available as its own MSI for standalone installations
  • •Cygwin is included in the APK and installed automatically
• More Windows friendly environment
  • All the AppLogic binaries and appliance files have moved to a Windows style directory structure, i.e C:\applogic and C:\appliance

Manual Steps to prep an appliance

Installation of Windows Server base class appliance

• Install Windows Server base class to transform a singleton into a managed appliance

Windows APK file structure

• /var/run/applogic < > c:\applogic\run
• /lib/applogic < > c:\applogic\lib
• /etc/sysconfig < > c:\applogic\config
• /tmp < > c:\applogic\tmp
• /bin/adlfix, udlparse.exe, vme.exe links > c:\applogic\bin

Backward compatibility

• /var/run/applogic/* > Links are created each time the appliance is started
• /etc/sysconfig/* > Links are created each time the appliance is started
• /lib/applogic/* > inks are created at install time

Native variable scripts for configuration

appliance.vbs, appliance.ps1, appliance.bat, appliance.sh

5. Hidden Properties

Problem:

• Property values shown in clear text
• Sensitive data (passwords) exposure

Solution:

• New property attribute "hidden"
• Property value masked as bullets (•••••)
• Hidden attribute propagation to application boundary
• Hidden values protected from being revealed

Declaring Hidden Property

Modify Boundary Dialog

• Hidden attribute option button

Assigning Hidden Property Value

Propert Values Dialog

• Hidden property value masked with bullets

6. Supportability Enhancements

Why 3tcollect and 3taudit is needed

When customers open a support ticket:

• No access to customer's system
• Customer/support spend hours collecting the information needed by L1/L2/devs
• Information is lost when transferring context to developers during escalations
• By the time the developers can see the logs they may be rotated out
• Hard to tell if configuration was modified in a way that can cause faults by just looking at the config files

Summary of 3tcollect

Collect troubleshooting information

• Enable customers/support to easily collect logs, config data and output of inportant system and '3t' commands and package them into a single tarball.
• Collects from grid controller, all the servers and BFC node

Location independent

• Can be executed from the AppLogic grid controller or BFC node (3.5 Beta Refresh)*
• Collects information from whatever is up and accessible via ssh. Does not block or fail if grid controller or any server is down.
• If grid controller is down, boot volume is mounted on the server to collect logs

Extendable

• Config file is UDL syntax. Easy to add/remove commands, log files to collect

FTP upload

• FTP server can be provided so that customers can upload the tarball to CA support's FTP site

Summary of 3taudit

Verify configuration

• Verify that the applogic.conf on both grid controller and servers is UDL compatible.
• Post a message on dashboard and syslog if problems are found

Future Version may

• Check for missing hotfixes and post a message
• Check for latest AppLogic version and post a message

7. Hardware Compatibility and Stability

Objectives:

• Describe the version information of hypervisor and kernel
• Provide comparison between current and previous AppLogic releases (with respect to kernel and hypervisor)
• Identify high level benefits achieved by upgrading to latest versions of hypervisor and kernel

Why need to upgrade?

Why upgrade to latest version:

• New hardware support
• Bug-fixes and optimizations
• New features
• Avoid back-porting of new drivers to old kernel

Version Information

AppLogic 3.1

• Xen version: 4.1.1
• Linux kernel version: 3.0.4
• Vmware version: ESX 4.1 update 1

AppLogic 3.5

• Xen version: 4.1.2
• Linux kernel version: 3.2.2
• Vmware version: ESX 4.1 update 2

Stats for Linux Kernel upgrade

AppLogic 3.1 (Linux kernel 3.0.4)

• Total drivers: 1093

AppLogic 3.5 (Linux kernel 3.2.2)

• Total drivers: 1427

In AppLogic 3.5, by moving to 3.2.2 kernel

• Added new drivers: 366•disk controller drivers: 39
• Network drivers: 32
• Removed old drivers: 32

8. VPAT - Accessibility Improvements

Addition of alt-txt to the web page images in the UI

• Screen readers use the alt-txt attribute to announce to the user that the image that currently has focus.
• For a user that is unable to see, alt-txt is needed for keyboard only navigation and to provide context to the user.

Updated Html files to conform to standards

• Alt-txt for images
• Added any missing title attributes for web pages and frames
• Added language attribute to all Html pages
• Fixed many broken or deprecated tags in html.

Some improvements to allow for keyboard only navigation

• The user can now navigate and read the Logs page with the screen reader
• Keyboard only sorting of the applications in the Applications List Tab

The Web Accessibility Toolbar

• Reveals otherwise hidden alt-txt attributes
• Used to identify missing alt-txt attributes

Jaws Screen Reader

• Read the resource meter of the Dashboard
• Read the Logs page in the Applogic Web UI

Keyboard only navigation

• Toolbar buttons of the logs page.
• Sorting of the columns in the Applications List tab.