How to Create a Grid

Installing and Maintaining CA AppLogic › BFC User Guide › Creating and Working with Grids › How to Create a Grid

How to Create a Grid

As a Backbone Administrator, you want to set up a grid on the BFC. To control communication between the server and grid controller, storage access for appliances, and private inter-appliance communications, CA AppLogic uses a private network. On a public network, a grid uses the server public, application, and controller IP addresses. You use the New Grid Wizard and then you add users and configure group privileges to the grid.

The following diagram shows how you set up a grid on the BFC:

Diagram that shows how to create and configure a grid.

Create a Grid with the Wizard

To create a grid, use the New Grid Wizard. You can open the wizard from the Grids page to guide you through the grid creation.

Follow these steps:

Click Add Grid.
The General page of the wizard appears and specifies the grid name and license information.
Complete the fields on the General page:
1. Enter the name of the grid.
  Important! Provide an alphanumeric name that does not contain spaces.
2. (Optional) Enter a description about the grid.
3. Enter the account name that the CA AppLogic license key provides.
4. Enter the CA AppLogic license key.
5. Click Next.
The Version page appears and specifies the CA AppLogic software version with hotfixes (if any) to install on the grid.
Complete the fields on the Version page:
1. Select the software version from the Version drop-down list.
  If a hotfix exists for the version you selected, the name of the hotfix appears in the Hotfixes list.
2. To install the hotfix, select the checkbox.
3. Click Next.
The Xen page appears and specifies the minimum requirements for Xen server hardware for the grid. You can also use tags to designate server allocation.
Complete the fields on the Xen page:
1. Specify the following server values for the grid:
  - Enter the minimum number of required servers for a functioning grid.
  - Enter the optimal number of servers for the grid.
  - Enter the maximum number of servers for the grid.
2. Select the Xen checkbox if you want the specified values only to apply to Xen grids.
  You can specify different values for VMware grids in the next page of the wizard.
3. Enter the relationship for the tag.
  You specify a choice to establish the relationship that indicates Member of or Not a member of. This relationship refers to the tag that you indicate in the Tag/Property field.
4. Enter the tag that you want to participate in the relationship.
5. Enter more granular choices for server hardware by broadening or narrowing the criteria.
  For example, indicate membership in more than one tag, or you can restrict membership to specified tags.
6. Review the servers that match the tag and property criteria you indicated in Matching Xen/VMware Servers.
  Note: This area only lists free servers and does not list quarantined servers.
7. Click Next.
The VMware page appears and specifies the minimum requirements for VMware server hardware for the grid. You can also designate server allocation using tags.
Complete the fields on the VMware page:
1. If the grid uses VMware servers, specify the VMware server values for the grid.
2. Enter the relationship for the tag.
  You specify a choice to establish the relationship that indicates Member of or Not a member of. This relationship refers to the tag that you indicate in the Tag/Property field.
3. Enter the tag that you want to participate in the relationship.
4. Enter more granular choices for server hardware by broadening or narrowing the criteria.
  For example, indicate membership in more than one tag, or you can restrict membership to specified tags.
5. Review the servers that match the tag and property criteria you indicated in Matching Xen/VMware Servers.
  Note: This area only lists free servers and does not list quarantined servers.
6. Click Next.
The Network Resources page appears and specifies the IP ranges to allocate for the grid for use by applications and the controller IP. If you optionally use VLAN tagging, you can select IP ranges from the ranges that you created in the Networks tab of the Administration page.
Complete the fields on the Network Resources page:
1. Click Add to view the Add/Edit IP Range dialog.
2. Enter a VLAN for the grid.
  Select a VLAN from the drop-down list. The VLANs you configured in the Administration page display in this list. You can choose not to include VLANs in your network resources.
  
  Note: If you have not defined VLANs in the Administration page, the value for VLANs displays "None (untagged)".
3. Enter the network for the grid.
4. Enter the IP range for the grid.
  The Start, End, and Scope fields auto-populate based on the network you select. You can change these fields as necessary.
  - Start—This option specifies the first IP in the IP range for the grid.
  - End—This option specifies the last IP in the IP range for the grid.
  - Scope—This option specifies visibility options of the IPs.
  - Public—This option specifies routable IPs that are visible outside the grid.
  - Private—This option specifies nonroutable IPs that are not accessible outside the grid.
5. Click Save on the Add/Edit IP Range dialog.
6. Click Set to set the following parameters for the Controller IP:
  - VLAN—This option specifies the VLAN that you want to use for the grid controller. You can select a VLAN from the drop-down list. The list displays the VLANs you created on the Network tab of the Administration page. You can choose not to include VLANs in your network resources. If you have not defined VLANs in the Administration page, the value for VLANs displays "None (untagged)".
  - Network—(Read-only) Specifies the IP address of the network.
  - Controller IP—This option specifies the IP address for the grid controller.
    The Controller IP must specify an IP that is in one of the defined external networks on the networks page, but cannot be in the range of application IPs defined for the grid. For example, the grid can have application IPs of 111.222.111.10 - 20, and a grid controller IP 111.222.111.9, but not a grid controller IP of 111.222.111.10.
    
    The controller IP can only be selected from non-shared application IP ranges defined in an external network. Add non-shared application IP ranges in the selected network.
7. Click Save and Next.
The Controller page appears and specifies the grid controller information. For example, the grid ID, grid controller userID and password, and the desired OEM kit to use.
Complete the fields on the Controller page:
1. Enter a unique identification number that identifies the grid on the network.
2. Enter the host name of the grid controller.
3. Enter a user name for the initial login on the grid.
4. Enter a password for the initial user.
  You are required to retype the password in a separate field.
5. Enter a recovery password for the controller that runs when the grid controller is not accessible.
  You are required to retype the password in a separate field.
6. Enter the name of the OEM kit for use when you create grids. The OEM kit lets you customize the appearance and selected elements of the CA AppLogic GUI.
7. To specify miscellaneous grid parameters, enter advanced settings.
  For example, you enter the account_id, account_key, ctl_blk_copy, and reference for the Backbone LAN.
8. Click Next.
The Storage page appears and specifies striping options and parameters for external storage settings.
Complete the fields on the Storage page:
1. If you want to enable striping, click Striping Enabled.
2. Enter the striping size in KB.
3. Select None for no external storage, or NFS for active storage.
4. Enter the IP address of the computer that hosts the external NFS share. The computer that hosts the NFS share should be in the same backbone network as the BFC.
  Important! The external storage share must be configured to route traffic to the 192.168.<grid ID>.0/24 networks through its interface on the grid backbone network. Configure the external storage before add grids, or the grid creation fails.
5. Enter the directory location for the shared storage.
6. Click test if you want to test the IP address and directory for external storage.
  The test attempts to contact the external storage at the indicated location. A message displays with test results.
7. Click Next.
The Authentication page appears and specifies the default authentication for Role Based Access Control RBAC), such as Local, LDAP, or Active Directory.
Complete the fields on the Authentication page:
1. Select Local, LDAP, or Active Directory as the authentication.
  Note: If you select LDAP as the authentication method, then a global user is only recognized in the global directory service if its entry uses one of the following basic object classes for a person: person, inetOrgPerson, or organizationalPerson.
  
  A group in the global directory service is only recognized if its entry uses one of the basic object classes for a group (groupOfNames and groupOfUniqueNames).
2. Enter the IP Address or Resolvable Domain Name of Directory Server.
3. Enter the port number that you want used to access the directory service.
  (Optional) Select whether to use Transport Layer Security (TLS) to access the directory service using an encrypted connection.
4. Enter the User Base Distinguished Name.
5. Enter the Group Base Distinguished Name.
6. Enter the directory field that contains the User ID.
7. Enter the directory field that contains the Group ID.
8. Enter the Login Cache period in seconds.
  This field indicates the time since a global user last authenticated with the global directory service. During this time, the user can authenticate locally in the event the global directory service is unavailable.
9. Click Save and Next.
Click Finish.
The grid appears in the list immediately, but the grid creation process can take a couple hours to complete. You can hover your mouse over the animated grid status icon to monitor the progress of the grid creation.

Configure Users and Privileges

You connect to the grid in your browser through the grid URL or Grid Controller IP address. You can add a user to the grid, add a user to a local group, and grant a user administrator privilege. You can also add SSH keys for a grid.

Follow these steps:

To add a user to the grid, execute the user create command in the Grid Shell:
```
create user firstname.lastname@myaddress.com pwd=-
```
Enter the password twice to create the user.
The user is assigned to a local role-based access group named all. This group does not have an explicit list of members, but includes all users as a member implicitly.
To add a user to a local group, execute the following command:
```
group modify groupname +local:user:firstname.lastname@myaddress.com
```
The grid modify_acl command lets you add a grid user to the grid_administrator group.

To grant administrative privileges to a user, execute the following command:

grid modify_acl local:user:firstname.lastname@myaddress.com=grid_administrator

You can grant a user access by pushing SSH keys to the grids. The /root/.ssh/authorized_keys file stores two keys named <random text>root@<bfc host>.

SSH keys have the following format:

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAtdsF6rxRPvi3aKciQ1J+7yZTgAXDVkNZDRzZPzpEtAak+tnroXS6RvwUOv8Oa9toCjlEIol1EuvaYBryzmRqH5cdm9UKXJjNZ5fnF7fhz928wcCHrHYebtOWGdqXi03MFt0Q4ytZI0+xnjS5iZkaJLW1IAoNLVQdrjUWhH4f+GIJ58jg7xpp3aORQ/zCnXWzxMJs78rX3LkbVW5EftzUZZowVSRVrO6JRq3/7sMzktKDHbB4Am2WoxzceA36NxPQsg7gcao5BPGAvJg2B1MnBdVBIy5gSYuPNtjjpfHboZWWd4cywZ+uIlOFIJy0GGIizrdza351MX7PuZ/YZulffw== root@bfccontroller

To add SSH keys, complete the following steps:
1. Select Grids from the left menu.
  The Grids page appears.
2. Select the checkbox for the grid.
3. Select Manage SSH Keys from the Server Actions drop-down list.
4. Indicate if you want to add or replace the grid SSH keys.
5. Click Browse to select the SSH key.
6. Click Push Keys.
  The key is pushed to the grid.

Start the Grid

You can start or stop a grid as necessary. If you stop a grid, the BFC powers off the grid servers. The grid cannot come back online until you restart the grid.

Important: If applications run on the grid, verify that you stopped them in the product system dashboard before you stop the grid.

Follow these steps:

Select Grids from the left Menu.
The Grids page appears.
Select the checkbox next to the grid you want to start or stop.
Select Start from the Grid Actions drop-down list.

Brand the Grid

You can customize the appearance and selected elements of the product GUI. You can use a custom logo when a user logs in to the GUI. You can also replace the available links on the grid dashboard support page.

Follow these steps:

Select Administration from the left Menu.
The Administration page appears.
From the Miscellaneous tab, click Add OEM Kit.
Specify the following fields:

Name

Specifies a name for the OEM kit file. This name appears in the OEM Kit drop-down list when you create a grid.

Set as Default

Indicates to use the OEM kit as the default kit when you create a grid.

OEM Kit File

Specifies the TAR file that contains an oem.conf file and an optional banner.png or banner.jpg file.
Click Add.
The grid is branded.

You have successfully created a grid. You can perform grid configuration tasks.