Cloudify Console Guide

Cloudify Console for Service Orchestration

The Cloudify Console provides a graphical user interface for orchestration that lets the operator:

All of the things that can be done in the Cloudify Console can also be done using the CLI and the REST API.

Logging into the Console

To login to the Cloudify Console you need to use a browser on your laptop or PC and enter in the URL of the Cloudify manager IP address or hostname, for example https://192.168.0.1/#/login. Then enter your username and password in order to login to the system.

Cloudify Console login

When you successfully login to the Cloudify Console, you see the Cloudify Console dashboard.

Cloudify Console dashboard

Uploading a Blueprint

Deleting blueprint

Before deleting a blueprint all deployments based on the blueprint must be uninstalled and deleted.

To delete the blueprint, just click Delete on the blueprint.

Delete blueprint

Setting up Customer Deployments

  1. To create a new deployment:

    1. Go to Local Blueprints and click Deploy in the blueprint.

      Deploy blueprint

    2. Fill in the inputs for the deployment and click Deploy.

      Create deployment - inputs

      The first field is the name of the deployment and this needs to be a unique name given to this one deployment. It is usually something that includes the customer name and blueprint name (for example, radius-city-west). The other fields depend on the blueprint requirements and are automatically generated based on the inputs of the blueprint. For more about inputs, see blueprint inputs).

    3. After the deployment is created it is shown as one of the deployments in Deployments.

      Deployments list

    4. To get detailed information about the deployment click on it. The page contains a set of default widgets, but you can edit the page and add or remove widgets. The default widgets include:

      • Topology: shows the graphical topology of the deployment

      Deployment Topology

      • Nodes: shows the nodes in the deployment

      Deployment Nodes

      • Executions: shows what workflows were executed on the deployment

      Deployments Executions

      • Deployment Inputs & Outputs: shows the inputs given to the blueprint in order to create this deployment and any outputs that were created as a part of the install workflow

      Deployment Inputs & Outputs

      • Source: shows the source files of the blueprint

      Deployment Source

      • Deployment Events & Logs: shows events and logs of executions

      Deployment Events & Logs

      • Monitoring: shows the performance monitoring metrics if they have been configured for the deployment. See next section on setting up the dashboard for monitoring to work properly with your selected deployment.

      Deployment Monitoring

  2. To install a deployment:

    1. To actually install a deployment into the network, click Execute workflow in the deployment menu and then click Install.

      Execute Workflow

    2. After you review the parameters for the install workflow, click Execute.

      Execute Install

    3. The progress of the Install execution is shown in the Deployment Executions, Deployments Events and Deployments Logs widgets of the deployment page.

      Deployment Install Progress

    4. To configure the dashboard for deployment monitoring to load a customized deployment widget that displays the performance metrics properly for your deployment:

      Note - The standard widget displays operating system metrics (CPU, Disk, Memory, Network IO). While this makes sense for a VNF deployment, it does not display the performance metrics of the SDN services, for example.

      1. From the user menu, select edit mode:

        Edit modein User Menu

      2. In the Edit mode box, click Add Widget:

        Edit page

      3. Add a time filter widget, which supports the metrics widgets):

        Time Filter Widget

      4. For every collector, add a deployment metric graph:

        Deployment Metric Graph

      5. Select a metric from the list of metrics:

        Deployment Metrics Configuration

After the widget is loaded, the correct performance statistics display.

Deployment Metrics Settings

Deployment Metrics Graph

Managing Customer Deployments

System resources

Plugins

By default, plugins are tenant-specific, meaning that a blueprint on one tenant cannot access a plugin on a different tenant. You can also set a plugin as global when you upload it to the manager. The Plugins table lists the plugins are available to the current tenant.

Plugins List

Snapshots

The Snapshots table provides a list of all snapshots that have been uploaded or created. The Snapshots table is only available if you have admin credentials.

The snapshots creation process captures data in the entire Cloudify Manager, not just that of a specific tenant. However, the snapshot is created in the context of the current tenant, and therefore must be restored from it.

Snapshots List

Secret Store Management

Secret storage provides a tenant-wide variable store for data that you do not want to expose in plain text in Cloudify blueprints, such as login credentials for a platform.

Secrets List

Role-Based Access Management

There are three widgets in this section: User management, Tenants Managements, User Groups Management.

  1. User management

    Allows creating users and editing their profiles, set password, set roles, and edit user’s group and tenants.

    • Adding Users to a Tenant

      1. In the User Management widget, click the List icon on the far right of the user entry in the table that you want to add to a tenant.
      2. Click Add to tenant.
      3. Select one or more tenants from the dropdown list and click save
      4. The user is added to the specified tenants.

      Unless the user has a deactivated status, they can perform actions on the tenant according to their role and the configuration privileges specified by the admin.

    • Removing a User from a Group or Tenant

      You can remove a user from a group or a tenant, without deleting them from the system. A user can be removed in two ways.

      • In the User Management widget, click the List icon of the user that you want to remove and select Edit user’s groups and click Save.
      • In the Tenant’s Management widget, click the List icon of the tenant from which you want to remove a user and select Edit users. Select the user to remove and click Save.

      The user is removed. If a user is a member of one or more user groups that are still assigned to a tenant, that user remains active on the tenant.

      User Management Menu

  2. Tenant Management

    Allows creating, editing and deleting tenants, add users and user groups to tenant.

    Tenant Management Menu

  3. User Groups Management

    Allows creating, editing and deleting user groups, add users and tenants to group.

    • User Management via an LDAP System To integrate with an external user management system, you must first ensure that Cloudify Manager is configured accordingly. This can be achieved during the bootstrapping process, or you can run the following command on a Cloudify Manager instance on which no actions have been performed (a clean machine.)
    • Adding User Group to a Tenant

      1. In the User Groups Management widget, click the List icon on the far right of the user group entry in the table that you want to add to a tenant.
      2. Click Add group to tenant.
      3. Select one or more tenants from the dropdown list and click Save.
      4. The user group is added to the specified tenants.

      All users within the group, unless they have a deactivated status, can perform actions on the tenant according to their role and the configuration privileges specified by the admin.

      User Group Management List