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2022
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derevan
Level 4
Level 4

The Application Stack Accelerator Pack 4.0 (ASAP) for Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud includes:

  • Deployment Guide PDF
  • Terms of Use (as a subscriber to this community, you have agreed to these terms)
  • Cisco Prime Service Catalog 10.0 service catalog packages and image files
  • Cisco Process Orchestrator 3.0 automation packs

The  kit is an extension to Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud 4.0 and  offers cloud application topology design and orchestration:

  • Configuring load balancing
  • Configuring firewall rules
  • Features for Application Stack Blueprint Management include: 
    • Testing Blueprints
    • Copying, Editing and Validating Blueprints
    • Reviewing and Approving Blueprints
    • Registering and Publishing Blueprints
    • Generating a TOSCA specification from Blueprint (future)
  • Features for Application Stack Ordering and Instance Management include: 
    • Ordering stack instances
    • Invoking power operations against  entire stacks
    • Invoking snapshot operations against entire stacks
    • Decommissioning stack instances
  • Features for Orchestration include: 
    • Creating multiple compute nodes in a single request
    • Support for servers created by vCenter, OpenStack, Amazon EC2, and vCloud Director (coming soon)
    • Bootstrapping and running Puppet and/or Chef configuration management on each new node in the stack
    • Full stack rollback as an error remediation option
    • Coming Soon (TBD): Configuring firewall and load balancer devices based on rules defined in stack blueprints

 

Please  note that as a cloud accelerator, the content will continue to evolve  over time based on feedback from the community. We welcome comments and  suggestions and will do our best to respond and update as appropriate.

With  regard to support, the first point of contact should be the author  and/or this community. If you are having issues, moderators of this  forum will determine and advise if a TAC case is appropriate, otherwise  issues will be addressed here.

For overviews of blueprint design as well as stack ordering, view the following videos:

Designing Blueprints for Cloud Applications

Delivering Multi-Tier Application Stacks in the Cloud

Comments
derevan
Level 4
Level 4

Changes for v2 include:

1. Updated for compatibility with IAC 4.0 Patch 2.
2. Created new Stack Consumption Business Unit OU to be able to assign just the Stack Consumer role
3. Fixed Portal Page Permissions for Blueprints/Stacks (remember to import services AFTER importing portal pages)
4. Enhanced stack provisioing to configure servers in the sequence defined currently for boot sequence. Only the Puppet/Chef server configuration is queued; servers
   later in the boot sequence will wait until those earlier have successfully completed (e.g., allowing a DB server to be created before an application server attempts
   to create a DB schema and load data there)
5. No longer reboot services upon completion of stack order (no longer be necessary with new provisioning sequence enhancement)
6. Implemented a number of cosmetic fixes.
7. Version numbers are now recorded and incremented with each edit and copy of a blueprint.

derevan
Level 4
Level 4

Changes for v3:


1. Updated for compatibility with IAC 4.0 Patch 3
2. Added new Delete Blueprint service, which can either remove all service item details for the blueprint or mark the blueprint as deleted, retaining all details
3. Added new blueprint option that instructs the orchestrator to power cycle all servers in the stack in boot sequence after all the servers have been configured by Puppet or Chef.
4. Data retrieval rules have been normalized to work with both MS SQL and Oracle, eliminating the need for separate Catalog Deployer packages for ASAP services
5. ASAP is no longer limited to the four default network zones: Public, Private, Protected Public, Protected Private. It will now recognize all zones as defined in the Network Zone Type standards table (under Stack Design and Management)
6. The My Stacks portlet now includes add on services for individual servers in the stack (similar to My Servers)
7. Several issues reported by the community have been resolved

derevan
Level 4
Level 4

Changes for v4:

Updated for compatibility with IAC 4.0 Patch 4 (4.0.0.4) and PSC 10 R2 (with patch 1h)
Fixed issues with editing blueprints to add load balancing
Added all of the stack ordering services to list of services that can be configured for approvals

derevan
Level 4
Level 4

v4 has been uploaded with a new "Intelligent Automation for Stacks" TAP to fix an issue with automation pack dependencies.

derevan
Level 4
Level 4

A patch is available for an issue with Oracle (e.g., using the IAC appliance). There are 2 Catalog Deployer packages to deploy: ASAP_Software_Applications_Sample_Data (deploy one time only) and Stack_Blueprint_Design_and_Management_Services_v4a_patch (if you are deploying for the first time, use this package INSTEAD of the one from the original v4 kit).

derevan
Level 4
Level 4

Change Log for Version 6 June 17, 2014

  • Added support for UCS Director (UCSD)
  • Re-organized portal pages with new setup page for CPTAs to create design targets and modify network zones
  • Fixed issue with populating VDC dropdown when ordering stacks
  • Fixed form issues with the Approval moment for stack ordering
  • ASAP now supports blueprints where neither Puppet nor Chef are used
  • A new service was added to Modify Networks in VDC that assigns each network to an appropriate zone
  • Added support for multiple configuration phases and sequencing within phase, including:
    • A new Configuration Phase Standard (Initialization-Phase 1, Initialization-Phase 2, Finalization, Maintenance, and Decommission). The standard can be expanded, but only the first 3 phases are included in ASAP content; the remainder can be handled via extension.
    • New options, Configuration Phase and Sequence, are available when adding a configuration plan for a server to the blueprint. The default is Finalization. The initialization phases occur first and in the sequence specified, enforcing dependency order for configuring nodes at each phase. For any phase, concurrency can be achieved by using the same sequence number for servers in the same phase.
    • Node classification is re-created during each phase (so any role required at multiple phases needs to specified for each phase separately).
    • Not all servers are required to participate in all phases (ie, some servers can skip phases, and, in fact, the standard use case would be to only have a plan for Phase 3 (Finalization), skipping 1 and 2.
    • The final node classification will be the one for the last phase executed on a given server. It is recommended that all servers have a Finalization phase at a minimum.
    • Maintanance and Decommission phases are not currently implemented but are in the blueprint and can be orchestrated via extension points (they are there to suggest other possible configuration phases to support lifecycle)

 

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