Cisco also wants to cloud
Hello! I want to continue the topic of clouds and today we will talk about a product from Cisco. Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud (CIAC) is software that can automate an existing data center or help build your private or public cloud. I would like to note that there is not so much hype around this software as around platforms like Openstack or Eucalyptus. The software is powerful enough and allows you to solve almost any problem. All who are interested welcome under cat.
CIAC consists of two components: CPO and CCP. Neither of these products did Cisco itself. To automate the processes of Cisco in 2009 for $ 105 million buys Tidal Software Inc., together with the company receives the product Tidal Enterprise Scheduler. It was assumed that based on this product, Cisco will automate and virtualize data centers based on the Cisco Unified Computing System. As time shows, so it happened. For a full-fledged cloud, Cisco lacked one more thing - a self-service portal. In 2011, Cisco buys newScale and gets a service catalog and self-service portal. After these purchases, Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud appears - a naked, useless product. As soon as you start working with it at least a little, you will notice that you are working with different products that are trying to connect together. In some places, Cisco didn't even change the original names. In general, there is an opinion that Cisco does not want the cloud, a lot of time and resources are provided to the functional for deploying operating systems on UCS. They want to sell hardware and offer software for this hardware. The question is who needs it? Now everyone is going towards virtualization.
As I said before, CIAC consists of two components:
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On the diagram, everything that CIAC can do is circled in gray. At the moment, the main platform for virtualization can be considered VMware vCenter. The CPO has a connector to connect vCenter and automate the creation and management of the virtual machine. Like many platforms, CIAC is just a framework for building a cloud. Support is also provided for Cisco Server Provisioner (CSP) and UCSM for bare metal provisioning.
The portal through which the user gets access to our cloud. This product uses Java and if you want to install it, you will need:
I have listed everything with which the portal can work, you need to choose one of each item. Usually the standard installation takes place on JBoss and on Microsoft SQL. The installation process is quite fast, but integration with CPO and further configuration without experience can take a long time.
The portal supports LDAP authentication. There are many powerful tools that allow you to customize and add new services without writing code, but all this is so difficult and crooked that very often there are thoughts to write your portal from scratch.
The window for creating a new virtual machine is standard for almost all cloud platforms. Below you can still specify the username and password of the administrator. The entire portal works with requests. For example, the creation of a new virtual machine is a request that will later be sent to the CPO. Moreover, you can view the status of these requests or, for example, enable the functionality of apruva requests. In theory, for end users, this query functionality should be closed.
View request status window. In this case, the removal of the virtual machine that completed successfully.
After creating a virtual machine, the user can start working with it and perform standard tasks.
With this software, you can create workflow to automate processes in the cloud. Installation requirements:
CPO is really powerful software that allows you to automate many things. I will give a list of adapters that are:
There are also beta versions of adapters for integration with:
Building new processes is similar to programming. You drag activations and step by step build your process to automate a task.
In the future, you get something like this:
All these new processes can be linked to the portal. The user only has to send the necessary data using the portal to perform the process. An administrator can monitor how processes are executed.
Each process can be expanded and watched as it is performed in steps.
Quite an interesting software from a large company. And Cisco does not lead active sales, they are trying to sell it through their partners or offer large customers. Software is not free. And, for example, I don’t understand how you can pay money and get bare software, which you still need to finish for a long time, but large companies have their own rules of the game. Budgets are allocated - let's cut the money. Monstorial and too heaped up, in my opinion, the portal complicates its customization. As for the CPO, the product deserves attention. Question: Does he need someone for money? I think that when researching the market, not many will stop at this option, but if you buy a bunch of hardware from Cisco and you are offered to build a cloud, then you may well agree. Still, vendor lock-in and partnerships work.
Story
CIAC consists of two components: CPO and CCP. Neither of these products did Cisco itself. To automate the processes of Cisco in 2009 for $ 105 million buys Tidal Software Inc., together with the company receives the product Tidal Enterprise Scheduler. It was assumed that based on this product, Cisco will automate and virtualize data centers based on the Cisco Unified Computing System. As time shows, so it happened. For a full-fledged cloud, Cisco lacked one more thing - a self-service portal. In 2011, Cisco buys newScale and gets a service catalog and self-service portal. After these purchases, Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud appears - a naked, useless product. As soon as you start working with it at least a little, you will notice that you are working with different products that are trying to connect together. In some places, Cisco didn't even change the original names. In general, there is an opinion that Cisco does not want the cloud, a lot of time and resources are provided to the functional for deploying operating systems on UCS. They want to sell hardware and offer software for this hardware. The question is who needs it? Now everyone is going towards virtualization.
Architecture
As I said before, CIAC consists of two components:
- Cisco Cloud Portal (CCP) - it provides users with a self-service portal through which they can access cloud resources.
- Cisco Process Orchestrator (CPO) is a cloud backend that automates tasks.
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On the diagram, everything that CIAC can do is circled in gray. At the moment, the main platform for virtualization can be considered VMware vCenter. The CPO has a connector to connect vCenter and automate the creation and management of the virtual machine. Like many platforms, CIAC is just a framework for building a cloud. Support is also provided for Cisco Server Provisioner (CSP) and UCSM for bare metal provisioning.
Cisco Cloud Portal
The portal through which the user gets access to our cloud. This product uses Java and if you want to install it, you will need:
- Linux, Windows
- Java
- JBoss, WebSphere, WebLogic
- Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Oracle 11g
I have listed everything with which the portal can work, you need to choose one of each item. Usually the standard installation takes place on JBoss and on Microsoft SQL. The installation process is quite fast, but integration with CPO and further configuration without experience can take a long time.
The portal supports LDAP authentication. There are many powerful tools that allow you to customize and add new services without writing code, but all this is so difficult and crooked that very often there are thoughts to write your portal from scratch.
The window for creating a new virtual machine is standard for almost all cloud platforms. Below you can still specify the username and password of the administrator. The entire portal works with requests. For example, the creation of a new virtual machine is a request that will later be sent to the CPO. Moreover, you can view the status of these requests or, for example, enable the functionality of apruva requests. In theory, for end users, this query functionality should be closed.
View request status window. In this case, the removal of the virtual machine that completed successfully.
After creating a virtual machine, the user can start working with it and perform standard tasks.
Cisco Process Orchestrator
With this software, you can create workflow to automate processes in the cloud. Installation requirements:
- Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008
- .NET Framework 4
- Java
- Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle 11g
CPO is really powerful software that allows you to automate many things. I will give a list of adapters that are:
- IBM DB2
- JMX integration
- Networking
- OLAP database
- Oracle database
- SNMP integration
- Terminal (SSH and Telnet)
- BMC Remedy
- Cisco UCS Manager
- Cloud integration
- Cisco Server Provisioner
- Cisco Cloud Portal
- Email integration
- Generic database integration
- VMware vCenter
- VMware ESX and ESXi
- Web service integration
- Microsoft Active Directory
- Microsoft SCOM 2007
- Microsoft SQL Server
- Microsoft Windows
There are also beta versions of adapters for integration with:
- vCloud Director
- Openstack
- Amazon EC2
Building new processes is similar to programming. You drag activations and step by step build your process to automate a task.
In the future, you get something like this:
All these new processes can be linked to the portal. The user only has to send the necessary data using the portal to perform the process. An administrator can monitor how processes are executed.
Each process can be expanded and watched as it is performed in steps.
findings
Quite an interesting software from a large company. And Cisco does not lead active sales, they are trying to sell it through their partners or offer large customers. Software is not free. And, for example, I don’t understand how you can pay money and get bare software, which you still need to finish for a long time, but large companies have their own rules of the game. Budgets are allocated - let's cut the money. Monstorial and too heaped up, in my opinion, the portal complicates its customization. As for the CPO, the product deserves attention. Question: Does he need someone for money? I think that when researching the market, not many will stop at this option, but if you buy a bunch of hardware from Cisco and you are offered to build a cloud, then you may well agree. Still, vendor lock-in and partnerships work.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/153275/
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