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Getting Ready › Release Notes › Installation Considerations › What's Included

What's Included

This section contains the following topics:

Distributed Kernel

Grid Dashboard

Application Configurator

Infrastructure Editor

Command-Line Shell

Application Programming Interface

Application Infrastructure Build System

Application Monitoring System

System Catalog

Sample Applications

Backbone Fabric Controller (BFC)

This release of the CA AppLogic grid operating system includes the aforementioned key components. Each of them is described in a section that follows.

Distributed Kernel

The CA AppLogic distributed kernel provides a set of system services required to support the distributed infrastructure and application model of CA AppLogic. The four most important system services include:

Grid Dashboard

The grid dashboard provides the following features:

Application Configurator

The application configurator is a control panel for configuring application parameters including setting their hardware resources, network resources, tuning, and other parameters. It is a single property sheet that includes all configurable parameters.

The application configurator can also be accessed through the command-line shell or scripts using the app configure command.

Infrastructure Editor

The infrastructure editor is a visual tool that makes it easy to create, assemble, and troubleshoot disposable infrastructure for CA AppLogic applications.

The user interface of the editor is modeled after popular drawing programs where you assemble infrastructure by dragging components onto the canvas, connecting them together, and configuring each component using a property sheet.

For running applications, the editor can be used to open the monitoring dashboard for the application, and to start the grid shell for the application or login to individual appliances.

Command-Line Shell

The command-line shell gives you control of all aspects of a CA AppLogic grid. The shell runs on the CA AppLogic controller and can be accessed either through a browser, using the new web-based shell, or over SSH using any suitable SSH client package.

The shell commands are designed with the following objectives in mind:

All commands have a batch form of their output that makes it easy to parse programmatically, while the command's default output is structured for convenient interactive operation.

Note: The CA AppLogic application programming interface is also available. It provides a web service interface to one or multiple CA AppLogic grids through a Representational State Transfer (REST) based service. The CA AppLogic web srvices API enables developers of RESTful client software to directly interface with CA AppLogic based Virtual Data Centers (VDC) (that is, a CA AppLogic grid). The API allows for programmatic control of large pools of virtualized infrastructure to be available within each VDC. To use the Web Service API, the WS_API application should be running on a grid. The WS_API application provides HTTP, HTTPS and VPN based access to the API.

Application Programming Interface

The CA AppLogic Application Programming Interface provides a web service interface to one or multiple CA AppLogic grids through a Representational State Transfer (REST) based service. The API enables developers of RESTful client software to directly interface with CA AppLogic based Virtual Data Centers (VDC) (that is, a CA AppLogic grid). The API allows for programmatic control of large pools of virtualized infrastructure to be available within each VDC. To use the Web Service API, the WS_API application should be running on a grid. The WS_API application provides HTTP, HTTPS and VPN based access to the API.

Application Infrastructure Build System

The infrastructure build system compiles the application infrastructure, producing a single entity for the application. It verifies resource and configuration constraints for each appliance and for the application as a whole, builds instance images and enforces the integrity of the application infrastructure. The infrastructure linker binds the application instance to the grid hardware resources just in time for application start, producing a ready-to-run application from the portable application format.

The infrastructure build system is automatically invoked when starting applications and is transparent for the grid operator.

Application Monitoring System

The application monitoring system provides a visual interface for monitoring performance and resource usage statistics of running CA AppLogic applications. The user interface of the Monitor is highly interactive and is accessible with a web browser.

System Catalog

The system catalog contains 42 appliance classes, ready to use in applications.

Note: Starting from CA AppLogic 3.7, all Linux-based appliances in all catalogs are re-based on CentOS 6.3, unless otherwise noted.

Note: If you are migrating applications from an older grid such as CA AppLogic 3.5, or do not have access to the newer classes mentioned above, you must update your applications after they are migrated to your new 3.8 grid. When you open your application in the editor, the editor displays a message stating that the appliance class is missing, and the appliance disappears from the canvas. In this case, you must drag the new appliance class instances onto the canvas and re-parameterize and re-connect the appliances, the save your application. The updated application is ready to be used.

You can create windows-based appliances on your CA AppLogic grid, but they are not included with CA AppLogic.

The system catalog is a global catalog, containing appliance classes that can be used by all applications on the grid. You can see the full documentation for each appliance in the catalog reference. The system catalog is read-only for CA AppLogic users and can be changed only by the grid maintainer.

CA AppLogic also includes the following global catalogs:

See the Appliance Catalog Reference Guide for a list of all appliances and their data sheets.

Notes:

Sample Applications

This CA AppLogic release includes the following 15 ready-to-use application templates.

Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) application templates:

Preconfigured Linux-based infrastructure templates:

Preconfigured Windows-based infrastructure templates (based on Windows 2008 Server):

Note: You can create windows-based appliances on your CA AppLogic grid, but they are not included with CA AppLogic.

Pre-installed application templates:

These applications are ready to run, requiring only network settings to be configured.

Note: Starting with CA AppLogic 3.7, all Linux-based appliances have been re-based on CentOS 6.3, and as such their assigned appliance resources have been modified. Therefore, trying to start an older version of any of the sample application templates may fail due to the resource changes introduced in the CentOS 6.3 re-based catalog. It is recommended to always use the new sample application templates that are distributed with the 3.8 release.

Note: The Aldo ci and Aldo ai commands are no longer supported in CA AppLogic 3.x. To import catalogs and applications into your grid (that is, system_ms that is shipped with CA AppLogic), copy the catalog/application to your grid's impex volume and use the cat import and app import CA AppLogic commands.

Backbone Fabric Controller (BFC)

You use the Backbone Fabric Controller (BFC) to install and upgrade grids (instead of ALD). The BFC contains a simple-to-use web-based GUI application that you use to create and manage all of your CA AppLogic grids within a single backbone. The BFC automatically downloads the latest CA AppLogic releases and hotfixes.