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AppLogic v3.5 What's New PreBETA Training

This is so you will understand the new features introduced in the 3.5 release of AppLogic.

1. Overview & Roadmap
2. Storage Area Network Support - NFS
3. Dynamic Canvas - Status and Control
4. Resource Quota Subsystem
5. Backbone Fabric Controller - API
6. BFC - Grid Node Selection
7. BFC - Bare-metal Installation
8. Cloud Commons Marketplace Integration
9. Other Enhancements

1. Overview & Roadmap

• Full Product Release
  • Customer validation through full beta period (3 months)
  • Beta starts the week of April 16, 2012
  • Scheduled GA is mid-July, 2012
• Storage Area Network Support - Phase 1 - NFS
• Dynamic Canvas - Phase 1 - Status and Control
• Resource Quota Subsystem
• Backbone Fabric Controller - API
• Backbone Fabric Controller - Grid Node Selection Criteria
• Backbone Fabric Controller - Bare-metal Installation
• Cloud Commons Marketplace Integration
• Other Enhancements

2. Storage Area Network Support - NFS

SAN Support - Phase 1

NFS

• Storage Area Networking has been demanded by a number of enterprise customer accounts
• Overall goal: to provide a means to attached to existing customer SANs via an IP-based protocol
• First phase will introduce SAN support via the Network File System (NFS) protocol
• Maintains current GUI, CLI and API interfaces for volume creation, removal, resizing, etc.
• Will be implemented as a low-level driver model within dom0 in order to facilitate quick mounting of the nfs share.
• The controller will create, remove, resize each volume as necessary on the target nfs mount point.
  • Each appliance volume will exist as a single file on the nfs mount-point.
  • Each server will mount the nfs mount-point and access the files required by appliances that are running on that server.
• At the point of grid creation, the user will input IP address and mount point for the NFS server
  • The NFS server is required to be IP addressed and attached to the backbone under the BFC administrative scope
• Volume creation dialog has a new drop-down to select between internal and SAN storage
• When SAN is selected, the volume is created and stored on the NFS server
• The mirroring functionality of the internal SAN is disabled for the external SAN
  • We rely on the mirroring and resiliency of the SAN for storage integrity.

3. Dynamic Canvas - Status and Control

Dynamic Canvas - Phase 1

Status and Control

• Overall goal: implement dynamic elements to the canvas found in the AppLogic infrastructure editor
• Focus will be to visualize the current state of components within an application
  • This will include the starting, stopping, running and errored states of each component
• Will also introduce the first phase of control through the editor
  • Each component icon is enhanced with a new control mechanism
  • This new mechanism will allow the start and stop of individual components within an application
• Will also introduce a new drop-down dialog to display progress and status during state transition (from Stop to Start, etc.)

4. Resource Quota Subsystem

• Overall goal: deliver a new means to control the consumption of resources based on pre-defined quotas
  • Will be implemented as an integral part of the CLI and API.
  • Quotas can be assigned to users or groups for the following resources: CPU, Memory, and Disk in the first iteration of this feature

    Quotas will be effectively disabled by default and not constrain any resources for any users

  • Once quotas are configured, they are policed at the time of provision for new applications
  • Two types of quotas will be supported

    Soft limits - when exceeded, a warning is issued during the resource allocation but the operation will continue

    Hard limits - when exceeded, a warning is issued and the operation terminates

  • Quotas can be nested and children quotas will be constrained by their parent quotas. This will address departmental or MSP reseller use cases.

5. Backbone Fabric Controller - API

6. BFC - Grid Node Selection

Backbone Fabric Controller

Grid Selection Criteria

• Overall goal: to provide an enhanced mechanism for the selection of server resources during the grid creation process
  • Will provide new dialogs and management interfaces to tag servers that reside in the available server pool based on user-determined criteria.
  • During the "Grid Create" workflow, the user will be able to select one or more tags which will determine the pool of server resources that will be utilized to build a new grid

    Additional functionality will provide a means of explicitly selecting each individual server to create a grid

7. BFC - Bare-metal Installation

• Overall goal: A repackaging of the BFC into a full distribution that includes the operating system (CentOS 5.5) and the product itself BFC 3.5
  • This will greatly improve the installation experience for users and deliver more predictable results
  • The product has historically been distributed as a stand-alone product and required the user to install the operating system separately
  • This new format will provide a means to effortlessly install and entire system from the "bare metal"
  • The only requirement for the customer is a system that meets the minimum system requirements for the BFC - the "bare metal"

8. Cloud Commons Marketplace Integration

• Overall goal: to restore the functionality found in the original implementation of the "App Store"
  • This includes work with the Cloud Commons team to interface between the Marketplace servers and a customer's grids to facilitate the delivery of purchased items from the Marketplace
  • Once a product is purchased, it will transmit the product to the customers grid directly
  • Once delivered, the AppLogic grid has the functionality to add these items into private catalogs for use by the customer.

9. Other Enhancements

• Supportability
  • 3tcollect utility

    A command-line tool that will collect all log and configuration data from a specific grid

    The structured hierarchy of files will be packaged it into a compressed file so that it can be transmitted to customer support/development for troubleshooting purposes

  • Main grid configuration file will be parsed once daily to ensure manual configuration has not occured
• New Windows APK and class creation wizard
• New "hidden" attribute for parameter fields; to secure password fields
• Multiple External Interfaces
  • Look for more detailed information in an update during the beta "refresh" release