Cloud

Deploying CloudForms in the Azure Cloud

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Overview

In this article we will deploy the CloudForms appliance in the Azure cloud. CloudForms is a cloud management platform based on the opensource project manageiq. Red Hat bought manageiq a few years back and opensourced the software. Originally it was designed to manage VMware but over the years has expanded to many additional traditional as well as cloud platforms. You can use this article as reference for both CloudForms and ManageIQ.

CloudForms can connect to many cloud providers such as RHEV (Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization), VMware, Hyper-V, OpenStack, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Engine (GCE) and Azure. Large organizations don’t have one cloud but many and in addition typically have on-premise, off-premise as well as public. All of these various platforms creates a lot of complexity if not managed right. CloudForms can create a bridge between traditional (mode 1) and cloud native (mode 2) workloads, offering applications a path to switch between these modes. In addition, CloudForms allows an IT organization to act as a cloud broker between the various public platforms. Finally CloudForms can be used to automatically deploy and manage applications across the various cloud platforms. Businesses have choice in platform, flexibility and speed while IT can manage it all centrally applying common policies or rule-sets regardless of where workloads are running.

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Enterprise Container Platform in the Cloud: OpenShift on Azure secured by Azure AD

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Overview

This article is a collaboration from Rolf Masuch (Microsoft) and Keith Tenzer (Red Hat). It is based on our work together in the field with enterprise customers.

In this article we will explore how to deploy a production ready OpenShift enterprise container platform on the Microsoft Azure Cloud. The entire deployment is completely automated using Ansible and ARM (Azure Resource Manager). Everything is template driven using APIs. The bennefit of this approach is the ability to build-up and tear-down a complete OpenShift environment in the Azure cloud before your coffee gets cold.

Since OpenShift already uses Ansible as its installation and configuration management tool, it made sense to stick with Ansible as opposed to using other tools such as Power Shell. A Red Hat colleague, Ivan McKinley created an Ansible playbook that builds out all the required Azure infrastructure components and integrates the existing OpenShift installation playbook. The result is an optimally configure OpenShift environment on the Azure Cloud. We have used this recipe to deploy real production Environments for customers and it leverages both Microsoft as well as Red Hat best practices.

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OpenStack Mitaka Lab Installation and Configuration Guide

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Overview

In this article we will focus on installing and configuring OpenStack Mitaka using RDO and the packstack installer. RDO is a community platform around Red Hat’s OpenStack Platform. It allows you to test the latest OpenStack capabilities on a stable platform such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or CentOS. This guide will take you through installing the OpenStack Liberty release, configuring networking, security groups, flavors, images and are other OpenStack related services. The outcome is a working OpenStack environment based on the Mitaka release that you can use as a baseline for testing your applications with OpenStack capabilities.
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OpenShift v3: Basic Release Deployment Scenarios

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source: http://snsoftwarelabs.com/

Overview

One of the hardest things companies struggle with today is release management. Of course many methodologies and even more tools or technologies exist, but how do we bring everything together and work across functional boundaries of an organization? A product release involves everyone in the company not just a single team. Many companies struggle with this and the result is a much slower innovation cycle. In the past this used to be something that at least wasn’t a deal breaker. Unfortunately that is no longer the case. Today companies live and die by their ability to not only innovate but release innovation. I would say innovating is the easy part, the ability to provide those innovations in a controlled fashion through products and services is the real challenge.
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OpenStack Liberty Lab Installation and Configuration Guide

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Overview

In this article we will focus on installing and configuring OpenStack Liberty using RDO and the packstack installer. RDO is a community platform around Red Hat’s OpenStack Platform. It allows you to test the latest OpenStack capabilities on a stable platform such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or CentOS. This guide will take you through installing the OpenStack Liberty release, configuring networking, security groups, flavors, images and are other OpenStack related services. The outcome is a working OpenStack environment based on the Liberty release that you can use as a baseline for testing your applications with OpenStack capabilities.
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2015 in review

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 56,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 21 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Governing the Cloud with CloudForms

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Overview

In a previous article it was stated that cloud in not a technology but rather an architectural methodology of resource governance that utilizes underlying virtualization technologies. Since cloud is more about the methodology, the technology platforms such as VMware vCenter, Red Hat Virtualization Management (RHEVM), Microsoft System Center, Amazon EC2 and OpenStack can change as application requirements or life cycles change. An application may start on a virtualization platform like VMware but over time move to a cloud platform such as OpenStack. It could even have components serviced by both. This is the exact concept behind what Gartner talks about when they refer to Bi-Modal IT. Gartner also says 50% of companies will screw this up. A bridge is definitely needed for managing applications between these various platforms. Red Hat CloudForms is exactly that bridge. It allows us to create an abstraction above the virtualization platforms so that governance and business process can remain consistent across the cloud.
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