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Chapter 2. Concepts
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Massively Scalable Infrastructure Management
CloudPlatform can manage tens of thousands of servers installed in multiple geographically distributed
datacenters. The centralized management server scales linearly, eliminating the need for intermediate
cluster-level management servers. No single component failure can cause cloud-wide outage. Periodic
maintenance of the management server can be performed without affecting the functioning of virtual
machines running in the cloud.
Automatic Configuration Management
CloudPlatform automatically configures each guest virtual machine’s networking and storage settings.
CloudPlatform internally manages a pool of virtual appliances to support the cloud itself. These
appliances offer services such as firewalling, routing, DHCP, VPN access, console proxy, storage
access, and storage replication. The extensive use of virtual appliances simplifies the installation,
configuration, and ongoing management of a cloud deployment.
Graphical User Interface
CloudPlatform offers an administrator's Web interface, used for provisioning and managing the cloud,
as well as an end-user's Web interface, used for running VMs and managing VM templates. The UI
can be customized to reflect the desired service provider or enterprise look and feel.
API and Extensibility
CloudPlatform provides an API that gives programmatic access to all the management features
available in the UI. This API enables the creation of command line tools and new user interfaces to
suit particular needs.
The CloudPlatform pluggable allocation architecture allows the creation of new types of allocators for
the selection of storage and hosts.
High Availability
CloudPlatform has a number of features to increase the availability of the system. The Management
Server itself, which is the main controlling software at the heart of CloudPlatform, may be deployed
in a multi-node installation where the servers are load balanced. MySQL may be configured to use
replication to provide for a manual failover in the event of database loss. For the hosts, CloudPlatform
supports NIC bonding and the use of separate networks for storage as well as iSCSI Multipath.
2.3. Deployment Architecture Overview
A CloudPlatform installation consists of two parts: the Management Server and the cloud infrastructure
that it manages. When you set up and manage a CloudPlatform cloud, you provision resources such
as hosts, storage devices, and IP addresses into the Management Server, and the Management
Server manages those resources.
The minimum production installation consists of one machine running the CloudPlatform Management
Server and another machine to act as the cloud infrastructure (in this case, a very simple infrastructure
consisting of one host running hypervisor software). In a trial installation, a single machine can act as
both the Management Server and the hypervisor host (using the KVM hypervisor).