Cloud OS
Introduction
At the heart of the DAAS solution sits a management and automation middle-ware called the Cloud OS. A cloud operating system is a state-of-art category of software specifically designed to orchestrate large collections of both physical and virtual machines.
Just like a regular OS on a PC, it abstracts the underlying complexity to offer the user a powerful and flexible working environment.
How does it work ?
The Cloud OS is compromised of many different components. The most important components are :
Cloud Automation Workflows
All actions that are executed in the cloud, ranging from user initiated actions such as starting a virtual server to fully automated actions like 15-minute snapshots of machines are translated to a cloud automation workflow.
The workflow contains a series of sub actions that will be launched in sequence to get the desired result. In case of starting a virtual server, the workflow will find the necessary capacity, load the server image from the storage, preconfigure the cache and only then send a 'start server' request to the hypervisor.
The cloud automation workflows incorporate datacenter industry standards for executing tasks and have been created by engineers with years of experience working in datacenters.
These workflows were created using the 'PyLabs' administration automation framework. You can read more about it below.
Cloud Resource Database
The Cloud Resource Database contains a comprehensive collection of information on the cloud environment. This means information on every physical machine, for every virtual server, for every virtual network and so on, are all stored within this database.
This database allows an administrator to maintain a complete overview of the infrastructure without manual auditing. It also allows you to easily add capacity to your infrastructure, without increasing the complexity of managing it.
Management Portal
Like any operating system, the CloudOS has both an abstraction layer build to manage the underlying components and a user interface. The DAAS CloudOS can be controlled either from a flash-based GUI (Graphical User Interface) or by using the Cloud API (see below). The flash-based GUI is called the 'Management Portal' and is accessible from anywhere using an internet connection.
If you want to learn more on how to use the 'Management Portal' you can subscribe to one of our upcoming technical webinars
Cloud API
The DAAS Cloud API is one of the most extensive API's available for programming and scripting the management of a cloud solution. It allows you full control of your infrastructure, while still being easy to use as any modern programming language.
The API can be accessed using well supported remote API protocols including REST and XML-RPC. It has been created using the 'PyLabs ApplicationServer'.
Technology Partners
Pylabs
PyLabs is a powerful scripting language, tailored to the needs of system administrators, independent of any specific operating system.
PyLabs is a cross-platform scripting language and works exactly the same on Windows, Linux or Solaris. PyLabs also comprises the Q-Package framework, a comprehensive cross-platform application packaging and distribution framework. Visit qpackages.org and pylabs.org for more information.