Building IBM's Common cloud platform with SmartCloud orchestrator

With IBM SmartCloud orchestrator, customers can perform end-to-end service deployments at the infrastructure and platform levels, and can customize workflows for process automation and IT management, resource monitoring, cost management, and more. Built on IBM's general-purpose cloud platform Common Cloud Stack (CCS), SmartCloud orchestrator leverages the core technologies of CCS to achieve comprehensive and efficient cloud system management.

Due to space limitations, the features described in this article do not cover all aspects of SmartCloud orchestrator. But through this article, users can clearly understand IBM smartcloud orchestrator architecture, product installation, server configuration, and product features.

Product architecture

As shown in Figure 1, IBM SmartCloud orchestrator bundles multiple products and components that are combined to build complex business architectures.

Figure 1.IBM SmartCloud orchestrator Frame composition

The following is a brief introduction to the various components of SCO:

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS): IaaS manages the computing, storage, network, and other resources in the system environment, and all system deployment requests are handled by IaaS. IBM SmartCloud Orchestrator employs OpenStack to achieve IaaS services. OpenStack is an open source, community-driven project that is highly scalable and resilient to cloud infrastructure management. IaaS Gateway: IaaS Gateway provides routing mechanism, two function. First, multi-geo deployment, which allows multiple iaas/openstack instances to be deployed in multiple locations and managed uniformly in SmartCloud orchestrator; second, it allows you to connect to Amazon EC2 or other OpenStack A compatible public cloud. Software stack (Software stack): A software stack is not a specific component, it is a concept that when a virtual system is deployed, users can select some packages to install when the system is deployed for the first time after the deployment is complete. Package deployments can take advantage of simple installation scripts or invoke Chef recipes and cookbooks for automated installation and configuration. Schema (Patterns): The schema component allows users to deploy more complex middleware configurations and multi-node applications. It provides a graphical editor that allows users to easily create patterns that contain multiple operating systems and multiple software that allow users to specify the underlying mirror files (part) for each system and a range of software that needs to be installed, specifying connections between systems and configuration scripts that can be run automatically. Users need to easily click Deployment mode to obtain a complex middleware configuration and multi-node systems. Mirroring management (Image Management): Mirrored management capabilities are implemented jointly by two products. The first is image construction and composition Tool (ICCT), where users use ICCT to describe mirroring and software stacks, deploy the operating system through synchronization and capture operations, and save the operating system as mirrors for reuse in a cloud environment. The second is virtual image Library (VIL), where users use VIL to manage virtual mirrors of the enterprise, providing check-in (to reference libraries), checking out (to the Operations Library), versioning, indexing, comparing, and searching. Orchestration Workflow (Orchestration Workflow): Orchestration Workflow Component provides a graphical interface that allows users to easily customize and extend business processes. This component integrates IBM Business ProcessManager (BPM), together with the Inline Automation Toolkit (SCO Toolkit), to consolidate automated workflows and other components of the cloud platform and cloud platform. Cloud Market (Cloud Marketplace): Cloud Market is a public website where users can download various forms of automation packages in the cloud market to apply to SmartCloud orchestrator. These automation packages can be chef scripts, schemas and mirrors, pre-built orchestration workflows, toolkits, and more. These automation packages can be released at any time after development is complete. Service Management: is an optional management feature included with the IBM SmartCloud orchestrator Enterprise Edition, such as SmartCloud cost Management (SCCM), ITM, and so on. Service management can also be a management tool that integrates into SCO through orchestration workflows. Development tools (Dev Tools): Development tools are not included in SmartCloud orchestrator, but can be found on ibm.com, representing the ability to integrate development tools such as IBM Rational Team concert.

This article will begin with SCO installation configuration, and gradually introduce the use and main functions of SCO. SCO supports virtual management programs such as KVM, VMware, Amazon EC2, and this article will be described with VMware vcenter examples.

Product Installation and Configuration

This section provides a detailed introduction to the installation configuration of IBM SmartCloud orchestrator.

Installation Preparation

To install IBM SmartCloud orchestrator, users need to prepare a solid machine with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 64-bit (the entity machine will be used as first box). The hardware requirements of the entity machine are as follows:

Network card Quantity processor memory hard disk space >= 1 Enable virtualization technology, >= 4 core >= GB >=600 GB

The requirements for hard disk partitions are as follows (all partitions must be under "/"):

/var-400 GB

/data-10 GB

/home-90 GB

/iaas-2 GB

/lib-2 GB

/tmp-2 GB

In the software section, in addition to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 64-bit operating system mentioned above, you need to do the following:

1. Rhel6.3-20120613.2-server-x86_64-dvd.iso, this file is used to install the virtual machine during the installation process, and you can place it in opt or any directory.

2. rubygems-*.el6.noarch.rpm

3. libguestfs-winsupport-*.el6.x86_64.rpm

Note: The second and third packages mentioned above must be placed in the/DATA/REPOS/SCP directory of the box above, and users can download these packages at the following websites: https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/

4. If there is already a MySQL database in the one box, please uninstall and delete the file, otherwise the OpenStack installation will fail.

See if Mysql:rpm-qa|grep MySQL is installed on the top of the box if so, remove it using the YUM command (please make sure YUM is working): yum-y Remove mysql-libs-xxx.xx.el6.x86_64 Delete installation files: >rm-rf/var/lib/mysqlrm-rf/etc/my.cnfrm-rf/etc/mysql_grants.sqlrm-rf/root/.my.cnf

5. Prepare the information for VMware vcenter server, including the IP address, username, and password of the vcenter server. Note that IBM SmartCloud orchestrator supports VMware vcenter Server 4.x or more than 5.x versions.

After finishing the above preparation, we can start to install IBM SmartCloud orchestrator.