IBM SmartCloud Enterprise uses service descriptors to model your service delivery

Follow the articles in this series that describe how to configure services that contain multiple components, and illustrate the proxy VM that provides load balancing and monitoring services.

The Cloud Services Framework (CSF) in IBM SmartCloud Enterprise provides a way to manage service. A service is a software that is a service (SaaS), a platform, a service (PaaS), or a managed product hosted on a smartcloud. Users can access services from the SmartCloud portal, providing a means of deploying and managing interdependent resources and coordinating the configuration of VM instances.

Services can be described using service descriptors, which contain several models for automating services within the Cloud service Framework. Find more information about service descriptors in SmartCloud Customizing Services Guide.

We have reused examples of mashups that were provided in the previous two-part article on building a mashup service. This article uses JSONP to implement cross domain communication to explain how to overcome the browser's homology policy limitations, combine and display data from third party sources, and use Yahoo! Query Language using JQuery.

Cloud Services Framework

The Cloud Services Framework (CSF) provides a smartcloud ecosystem that enables enterprise customers, IBM, and independent software vendors to deliver predefined and pre-integrated services at lower development and management costs. CSF is a platform for delivering, developing, managing and billing services on the cloud. Independent software vendors (ISVs) can create a new service product by creating a template service Asset in Rational Asset Manager and then registering the service product with the CSF API. Users within the customer's enterprise account can immediately test the service product. Once the service has passed the test, it can promote the service and provide it to other customers. See Provider ' s Guide for Images, Services and Software Bundles.

A service is a managed product hosted on SmartCloud that allows users to access services through the SmartCloud portal.

Service instances can be created in the Service Instances tab of the control Panel. The service product must have a service descriptor. A descriptor is a file that contains the definition of a service and a service resource. The service must be a product that has been registered in the SmartCloud Asset Catalog before it can be provided to the cloud consumer.

You can use models to describe your services to support the SmartCloud infrastructure and provide the appropriate service descriptors for potential automation. Services do not necessarily specify all models.

The

information model is mandatory and provides identification information for the service, such as short names, descriptions, graphical icons, service provider names, contacts, and service types. The structural model determines resources. Any resources that are allocated during the configuration of this service are specified here, such as instances, IP, keys, and storage resources. The operational model determines the workflow of operations that are performed during the life cycle of a service instance. Here, you need to specify the name of the Java script file for configuring, canceling configuration, details, and managing operations. You also need to provide a back-end configuration pattern that implicitly performs configuration and Undeploy workflows on the back end, based on dependencies obtained from the structural model. The Data model defines input and output parameters. The Licensing model allows you to specify an End user license agreement. The Cloud concerns model specifies the availability of data centers for the service.

As part of the service descriptor that simulates a given service product, you can configure or unassign a service instance that is executed using user credentials in the browser session of the service instance owner by writing client JavaScript. The Ibmcloud.csf.Deployer Library provides a simple JavaScript API that supports configuration and cancellation of component resources to help develop scripts for configuring and canceling service instances based on browsers. It also provides a way to perform operations in a particular order, waiting for the configuration or cancellation of a component to complete, and then executing the rest of the script. The current version of the library supports keys, IP addresses, volumes, and instances.

The Details view script is used to update the view of details, which may appear in any content on the portal site under the service instance grid, as well as any content on the portal site that appears on the Getting Started view.

Management scripts enable service users to navigate to the appropriate user interface and manage service instances.

See Custom Service Guide for more information about service descriptors, models, views, and deployment libraries.

The Cloud services Framework allows users who create instances to view service instances and allows administrator users in the account to view service instances created by standard users. A service instance can only be managed by the user who created it.