Automation for VMware vCloud Director using Chef's knife-vcloud

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Plugin is available at https://github.com/opscode/knife-vcloud

Configuration used:

• CentOS 6.5
• Chef 11.8.2
• knife-vcloud 1.0.0

Following steps were used to complete the automation process:

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/opscode/knife-vcloud.git
cd knife-vcloud/
bundle install
gem build knife-vcloud.gemspec
gem install knife-vcloud-1.0.0.gem
gem list | grep vcloud
- See if after entering the above command you see the gem knife-cloud. If yes the setup was successful. If no something went wrong.

cd ~./chef
vim knife.rb

- add the following details to the last line of this file (Note: username is @ i.e organisation name supplied) :
knife[:vcloud_username] = "username@orgname"
knife[:vcloud_password] = "##########"
knife[:vcloud_host] = "xxx.xxxxxxxxxxxxx.com"

[ESC]:wq

knife vcloud server list
- Should list all the existing servers

You can also create your own server using "knife vcloud server create" with additional parameters with caution.

e.g

knife vcloud server create --vcpus 2 -m 1024 -I TestServer -A 'roshan' -K "MyPassword" -r 'role[webserver]' --network myNetword-id

Good Luck!!

Reference Links:

• https://github.com/opscode/knife-vcloud
• http://blogs.clogeny.com/category/tutorials/
• http://www.getchef.com/blog/chefconf-talks/writing-a-knife-plugin-for-your-shiny-new-vmware-vcloud-director-based-cloud-chirag-jog/

Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud

A lot has been said, heard and read about Cloud. There so many ways that the cloud gets filtered further. In my previous blog we discussed about Saas, Paas and Iaas. More and more companies are looking for cloud as the solution for their business needs. We shall further discuss 3 important types of cloud.

1. Public Cloud
2. Private Cloud
3. Hybrid Cloud

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 Public Cloud : Public cloud is considered to be a standard cloud computing model where there is a direct interaction with the users of cloud. It also called as 'shared cloud'. All applications, infrastructures or storage are made directly available to the users. It could be a Pay as You Go service or free as well. Types of public clouds include all Saas, Pass and Iaas platforms. The primary benefit is that it is accessible from anywhere anytime. Public cloud is an ultimate choice when you have lots of users for you application. For e.g an email application like Google, a social network like Facebook. A collaboration is needed among developers over a Paas or for employees to work remotely public cloud is the best choice. This cloud may or may not be managed by the providers but usually it is. Also, it can be scaled very easily as per our needs.
For e.g Iaas based service like Dropbox you can add and remove space dynamically as per your choice.

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Private Cloud : Here the services and Applications are not exposed to general public and are instead kept private. Highest level of security and control is maintained in these kind of architectures. These services often run behind a firewall and are also called as 'Enterprise clouds'. Advantage is security and resources can be shared among groups. There's a choice to make for H/W and S/W with private clouds and the ability is greatly dependent on what is being used. Its used mostly by companies dealing with high level confidential data.
Many companies are now opting for Enterprise cloud

Hybrid Cloud : Even though many organizations make the use of private as well as public cloud as per their need, there could be vendors looking for functionality of both a private as well as a public cloud. This is achieved with a Hybrid Cloud. At times there are companies that want their data to be secure as well as still are required to communicate to the customers over the network. Many of such companies choose a Hybrid Cloud. Here basically you can set access permissions for which applications need to be publicly accessible and which of them should not be and needs to be in private cloud. 

(To be contd..)