CA 3Tera AppLogic 2.9 release to introduce optimized, self-healing, highly available cloud with a globally federated API
CA 3Tera® AppLogic® 2.9 is the first major new release of AppLogic as part of CA Technologies. With the new ownership of the product, there are the expected significant improvements for enterprise customers and the service providers catering to them. CA 3Tera AppLogic 2.9 also continues to provide the innovative and category-defining capabilities that have earned AppLogic many awards in the last four years.
CA 3Tera AppLogic 2.9 completed successfully a three-month beta program and will be generally available this month. (A link to the full release notes will be provided here.)
I would like to focus on the key new features and capabilities in this release:
1. Full High Availability
High availability and full system redundancy is now integrated in every subsystem of the platform, ensuring that storage, networks, compute resources and the control node are all highly available and the system can recover from the failure of any single element without human intervention. The addition of redundant network support in 2.9 completed this functionality, adding support for redundant network switches.
The high availability support includes three important automated steps to restore operations quickly and efficiently:
• fault detection,
• isolation of the failed component, and
• recovery of the affected application(s).
Once affected applications are restored to operation – typically within minutes of the failure – AppLogic proceeds to rebuild the infrastructure redundancy, readying the system for handling future hardware failures.
What does this mean for you?
CA 3Tera AppLogic is designed from the ground up to expect hardware failures and recover applications quickly and automatically.
As a result, you get a very resilient and self-healing platform that can keep applications running, ensuring an amazing SLA without requiring emergency fire drills in the data center… using only plain commodity x86 servers and switches. CA 3Tera AppLogic is a unique solution where all redundant capabilities are managed by a single product and through a single user interface, bringing customers simplicity and reliability with zero integration effort.
2. Network Topology Detection and Path Optimization.
CA 3Tera AppLogic automatically discovers the network topology and cabling layout, and ensures full cross-sectional bandwidth between any two servers in the system – all the while maintaining the network redundancy and recovery capability in case of a network component failure. CA 3TeraAppLogic 2.9 removes the majority of network infrastructure bottlenecks and eliminates manual network configuration. It also displays the state of all network infrastructure elements, the current paths used, and allows manual control for troubleshooting and testing. It dynamically detects and adjusts for changes that occur in the system (e.g., re-wiring) and issues alarms in case it has detected a failure and has performed automated recovery.
Why is this important?
Tracking down network infrastructure bottlenecks is not an easy task, and doing that in complex composite applications is one of the hardest IT projects. Maintaining full cross-sectional bandwidth in redundant network environments is the key to eliminating such bottlenecks and traditionally requires labor-intensive and fragile manual configuration.
CA 3Tera AppLogic fully manages the network path optimization and saves you from performing manual switch configurations. That means you always have available the maximum bandwidth from the network infrastructure, and you don’t need to intervene to recover or handle failure in the networking equipment.
3. Federated Web Service API for Global Access.
CA 3Tera AppLogic 2.9 now comes with a federated web services API. It is based on the familiar AppLogic shell command semantics, provided over a REST-like, simple-to-use transport mechanism. In a typical AppLogic style, the API is implemented as an AppLogic composite application, using only standard catalog components.
The API provides programmatic control over nearly all CA 3Tera AppLogic functions, complementing the graphical user interface and the command line shell. For easier integration with Java and PHP/Javascript applications, the API can provide responses either in XML or JSON format. A special asynchronous request mode is provided to orchestrate commands that may take longer to execute, communicating the result of such operations upon completion in a clear and timely way.
The API can federate any number of CA 3Tera AppLogic clouds through a single API access point; and also a grid can be controlled through multiple API points, for redundancy and access segregation.
Why this matters?
The new API provides the basis for true hybrid cloud implementations. The federation capability allows cloud users to set up API access points that span their own virtual datacenters (on-premises/private cloud), as well as virtual datacenters provided by one or more public cloud providers – all accessed through the same API access point and with the same credentials. Further, the API provides abstraction of the infrastructure location, so that migrating clouds and virtual datacenters – between public and private, and between different service providers, can be performed without impacting control and monitoring software.
The asynchronous semantics for long-running commands provide proper job-specific progress report, resulting in client code that is simple and reliable.
4. IP address enforcement improves customer isolation in shared public cloud environments
Like prior AppLogic versions, release 2.9 continues to strictly enforce the security of network connections between components of composite applications based on the zero-trust network architecture that is unique to CA 3Tera AppLogic. Release 2.9 provides further security by also enforcing the public IP addresses assigned to applications, automatically restricting incoming and outgoing traffic only to the assigned IP addresses.
Unlike virtualization solutions (which, in general, don’t enforce the IP addresses) and other clouds (which typically support only one IP address per VM), CA 3Tera AppLogic 2.9 supports multiple public IP addresses per appliance, allowing greater flexibility without sacrificing security.
Why this matters?
IP address enforcement improves significantly the isolation between unrelated applications. While very important in on-premise/private cloud environments, this enforcement is essential in multi-tenant environments such as shared public clouds. CA 3Tera AppLogic 2.9 extends the unique zero-trust/zero-configuration network architecture, providing this important layer of security without requiring expensive gear and complicated network switch VLAN setups – in fact, without any configuration whatsoever.
Addressing security is generally a compromise between the level of security and the effort required to maintain it. In a very convenient and error-proof way, CA 3Tera AppLogic gives you the highest level of security with zero configuration effort.
5. Other Features
OVF Support
CA 3Tera AppLogic 2.9 enables importing standards-based OVF VM packages, making it easier to on-board applications from existing virtualization environments. The new image2class utility command expands on the prior releases’ iso2class functionality and allows importing Linux virtual machines packaged in the DMTF-standard OVF format, converting them to standard CA 3Tera AppLogic appliances in the process.
Support for Microsoft Windows 2008 Server
CA 3Tera AppLogic 2.9 now fully supports both 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows 2008 Server-based appliances. It extends the capabilities for Windows 2008 support found in prior release, providing volume management for NTFS6, signed para-virtualized drivers for improved I/O performance, as well as new Windows 2008 Server templates and appliances.
National Language Support
CA 3Tera AppLogic 2.9 also expands national language support within customer workloads. The appliance kit included in the new release improves compatibility with international versions of Microsoft Windows 2003 and 2008. In addition, a new virtualization setting allows selecting the keyboard language mapping to improve operation with non-US keyboards.
Of course, CA 3Tera AppLogic 2.9 is backward compatible with appliances and applications from prior releases, so upgrading the grid or migrating your workloads onto a new 2.9 grid is trouble-free.
CA 3Tera AppLogic 2.9, like prior releases, is packaged for turnkey installation, providing zero-to-cloud setup in less than 4 hours. To try CA 3Tera AppLogic 2.9 today, please contact your CA account manager or reach us through our web site.
Happy cloud computing,
- Peter
