Cloud Computing Made Easy^®

From Kaavo - Wiki

Sign-up for IMOD free trial

Visit Kaavo Website for more information

Release 2.5.0 (August 31, 2010)

• Web Service API Enhancements: Added following additional APIs to the IMOD Web Services interface, for details please review the Kaavo Web Services Documentation
  • getSystems(userId, password)
  • getNTierDetail(systemName, userId, password)
  • getTierDetail(systemName, tierName, userId, password)
  • getServerTypeDetail(systemName, tierName, serverRole, userId, password)
  • getEvents(systemName, userId, password)
• Enhanced Event Processing: Multiple concurrent events on a system are now processed sequentially in order and the IMOD engine executes the corresponding actions. Duplicate events are ignored
• Speed Up Shutdown process: During Shutdown tier level workflows don't wait for servers to be terminated, they continue after the server shutdown request has been sent to the provider
• Dynamically Defined Event Triggers are now Persisted: Previously only the event triggers defined prior to starting a system were persisted and any event trigger defined while the system was running (dynamic event) was not persisted. To simplify the usage, we removed the distinction of dynamic events and now event triggers defined on a group of servers when the system is running are persisted as well as automatically configured. As these events are persisted, they are automatically configured every time the system is restarted too.
• Improved Disaster Recovery: Improved disaster recovery for the SaaS version of IMOD. Our current SaaS version of IMOD is running in the cloud. In the case of an extremely unlikely event of all datacenters of the cloud provider becoming unavailable, we now have the ability to bring IMOD SaaS version online at an alternate cloud provider in less than 2 hours
• Key Authentication for Terremark: Added support for public key authentication for servers on the Terremark cloud
• Deployment Error Handling: Added ability to customize responses to error conditions during deployment and server configuration by adding onError attribute in the server startup workflow tag <startup timeout="300" onError="Continue"/>
  • onError="Continue" means if error occurs the rest of the system will continue ignoring the error

If we do not specify any onError attribute, it will act according to the current default behavior, i.e. the tier and the system deployment will be in error state and users have to manually abort the system and retry the deployment after addressing the issue responsible for the error. See the following example of how to configure this within the serverType tag:

serverType role="loadbalancer" min="1" max="8">
   ...............................
   ...............................
   ...............................
   <startupCount>2</startupCount>
   <workflow>
             <startup timeout="1200"  onError="Continue"></startup>
             <shutdown/>
   </workflow>
   ...............................
   ...............................
</serverType>

Release 2.4.0 (August 2, 2010)

• Terremark Cloud Support: Released support for Terremark vCloud Express, enabling users to deploy and manage applications on the Terremark Cloud. We have not tested the Windows OS on Terremark cloud yet; for jump start please refer to the Sample Terremark System Definition provided with this release. Refer to Terremark Account Setup for getting started.
• UI Wizard Support for Physical Servers: Users can now perform hybrid deployments including the physical servers using the Multi-cloud deployment UI wizard. This eliminated the need to manually edit the system definition for adding Physical Servers to deployments.
• Support for EC2 Cluster Compute:: Added support for Amazon EC2 Cluster Compute instance. Cluster Compute Instance has Quadruple Extra Large 23 GB memory, 33.5 EC2 Compute Units, 1690 GB of local instance storage, 64-bit platform, 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Amazon currently support the cluster compute instance for AMI ami-7ea24a17. When configuring the server pick the instance type cc1.4xlarge. You also need to pick EBS as the root device. Following is the snippet of the System Definition XML for the Cluster Compute Instance.

<rootDeviceType>ebs</rootDeviceType>
<machineIdentifier>ami-7ea24a17</machineIdentifier>  
<instanceType>cc1.4xlarge</instanceType>  
<availabilityZone>us-east-1b</availabilityZone>

• UI Validation Improvement: Added friendly error messages for validating the syntax when editing the Events and Actions from the UI.
• Gluster Deployment System Definition: Released sample system definition for deploying and configuring and running multi-server Gluster on EC2.
• Fine-grain Action Execution: Added, ability to Execute Actions on Individual Servers, i.e. if there are more than 1 server in a group of servers (server roles) users can now specify the actions to be executed on a specific server in the group. This is currently supported in the System Definition XML, in the next release we will add support for this fine grain control in the Action UI. The syntax for executing actions on specific server is [tier=app][serverrole=jira][index=2] e.g. if there are 5 jira servers in the app tier, specifying index=2 will execute the action on the second app server. In previous release the action was executed on all the servers in the group. Users can still execute actions on all servers in the group by not adding the index, e.g. [tier=app][serverrole=jira] will execute actions on all 5 jira servers in the app tier.

Release 2.3.0 (July 2, 2010)

• Physical Server Support: Released support for physical servers, allowing users to manage complex hybrid deployments for workloads using physical servers, private cloud, and public cloud resources simultaneously. For details refer to the Physical Server Section of the n-tier guide. Note in this release UI wizard for configuring physical servers is not supported, so you have to directly add/edit the System Definition XML for physical servers.
• UI for Custom Events: Users can now define custom workflows to be executed in response to pre-defined events using the UI wizard. Making the UI easy to use is very important to us, so please keep on providing the feedback so we can continue to improve it. We appreciate your feedback and hope you like the new improvements.
• Encryption of System Definition: Before this release we were only storing the user sensitive information in encrypted format in the cloud. Starting this release we have started to store the entire System Definition in encrypted format as complex system definition files could have sensitive deployment information.

Release 2.2.0 (May 31, 2010)

• Kaavo Web Services: Released Web Services to allow developers to programatically interact with Kaavo IMOD to manage and deliver on-demand custom apps, SaaS, and PaaS offerings to their customers. Register for the free one hour webinar to learn how to use Kaavo Web Services. For additional information on using Kaavo Web Services please checkout Kaavo Web Services Documentation
• Event UI: Added additional Event tab for deployed systems to allow adding and configuring events using graphical interface. Currently the graphical interface support lifecycle events like pre-shutdown, post-startup, etc. Graphical interface in this release doesn't support custom events, for now please use the online XML editor for the custom events. Currently we support few provider specific commands in pre-shutdown and post-startup tags for Amazon EC2; we are planing on deprecating this support and replacing these commands with common actions. Graphical interface doesn't recognize provider specific commands, please use the XML document for editing them and it is better to write reusable actions instead of these commands. We are continuously improving the user interface to make it easy to create and edit the System Definition so please keep on providing the feedback.
• Forums: Added Forums site for related discussions and issues please sign up at http://forums.kaavo.com and start using it
• Post Execution Delete: Simplified the ability to delete generated file on the server side after executing an action by setting delete-on-exit flag on the action. This is helpful in case there is sensitive information like username or password in the file which shouldn't be left on the server. See the example below.

<action name="start-apache" execute="true" delete-on-exit="true" target="[tier=web_tier][serverrole=default]">
       <scriptName>apache.sh</scriptName>
       <scriptPath>/root</scriptPath>
       <scriptTemplate type="inline">
       <![CDATA[
               #!/bin/sh
               /etc/init.d/httpd start
               .............
               .............
</action>

• Common Server Attribute Names: To allow reuse of actions we have implemented common names for server attributes which are supported by all integrated cloud providers but in some cases have slightly different names, e.g. imageID vs. emiImage. If you want to reuse your Actions using dynamic server attributes across providers we recommend using the common name for the attributes. Check out the Common Server Attribute Names section in the n-tier guide for the listing of common names for the server attribute.

Release 2.1.0 (April 29, 2010)

• Actions UI: Added ability to edit actions for deployed systems from the Actions tab. This makes it easy for users to find the relevant actions and edit them or add or delete the actions to a system without having to look at the entire system definition. We are working on simplifying the editing and creation of system definitions and in future release we will be provide similar support for editing events and commands
• Users can now reconfigure servers in a deployed system using UI interface instead of editing the XML
• Ability to add additional servers of same type in a running system using the server drop down menu in the n-tier UI
• Custom Images for Rackspace: Added support to query and launch custom images on Rackspace from the UI. During the configuration of servers in a system, users can select images from the drop down menu for launching the server
• Added support for elastic IP for Eucalyptus
• An un-configured deployed system now shows all the servers in each server type, previously we were only showing one server for each server type for a system during un-configured state. As reminder serverType is a way to group and configure a set of servers the same way, so configuring any server in the group of servers applies the configuration to all other servers in the group, e.g. group of load balancers running on same cloud provider. If you want to configure servers independently, define them as different serverTypes
• Pre-Shutdown Workflow: Added support for pre-shutdown workflow in the server lifecycle for handling things like backing up files, flushing I/O, etc. Here is the format of pre-shutdown tag:

<serverType role="ndbd" min="1" max="2">
           ..................
           ..................
           <workflow>
             <startup timeout="10000">
               <post-startup>
                 ..................
                 ..................
               </post-startup>
             </startup> 
             <shutdown timeout="1000"> 
              <pre-shutdown>
                 <command type="action" name="backup-phpcollab-database"/>
              </pre-shutdown>
             </shutdown>
           </workflow>
          ..............
 </serverType>

• Support for EC2 Asia: Added support for deploying and managing apps on EC2 Asia Region (Singapore)

Release 2.0.1 (March 31, 2010)

This is a maintenance release with some performance improvements:

• Improved deployment time for applications by provisioning the servers in parallel for all tiers. Now all the servers in the multi-tier systems are provisioned before the execution of the workflows for configuring servers and tiers. This reduces the overall deployment time for multi-tier applications by 40% to 50%

Release 2.0.0 (March 16, 2010)

• Implemented fast format to improve peformance for disk formatting for encryption of the persisted data
• IBM Cloud Support: IMOD edition for IBM is available at https://imod.kaavo.com/?partner=ibm to switch back to the regular edition of IMOD go to https://imod.kaavo.com/?partner=imod. Watch the 5 minute overview video for details. The video is also available on the Kaavo YouTube channel. Some of the key capabilities for the IBM Cloud support in IMOD are:
  • One Click Deployment: With a single click, IMOD automatically brings online one or multi-server systems, configures middleware, deploys applications and workload and initiates all dependent services in a specified order. This allows users to setup and tear down test and development environments within minutes.
  • Scheduling and Automation: IMOD executes complex workloads at a designated time without manual intervention.
  • Best Practice Deployment Templates: IMOD simplifies the creation and sharing of complex configurations and n-tier deployments using a single system definition file. This provides a consistent environment for development and testing.
• Provided instructions for installing monitoring agents on custom Window images
• Private Cloud Support: Enchanced support for Eucalyptus and released documentation for configuring the private cloud. Note use the N-TIER page for Eucalyptus, the DASHBOARD page is for Amazon EC2 only, it is legacy dashboard and will be deprecated in future. Some of the key capabilities for the Eucalyptus support are:
  • One click deployment
  • Monitoring, alerts, and auto-pilot
  • Scheduler
  • Hybrid deployments across public and private clouds
• Improved the performance for updating the state machine for large scale deployments
• Documented supported OS for auto-installation of monitoring agents. Non supported OSs may require manual installation of agents or custom installation scripts to enable monitoring. Please contact Kaavo support if you face any issues.
• Schedule volume backup for EC2 now use volume-id as a unique identifier, allowing multiple users sharing the EC2 volumes to view and manage scheduled backups

Release 1.9.0 (January 29, 2010)

• AWS EC2 West Region Support: Added support for AWS EC2 West Region
• Color Coded XML Editor: Added online color coded editor to simplify the editing of system definition files by advance users
• AWS EC2 EBS Boot Instance Support: Added support for EC2 instances using EBS for booting. EBS boot instances, can be included in the n-tier system by adding optional information to the awsServer tag. Setting terminateOnStopInstance false ensures that the server is stopped and not terminated

<serverType role="default" min="1" max="2" >
 <awsServer>
 ..................
 ..................
 <securityGroup></securityGroup>
 <keypair></keypair>
 <rootDeviceType>ebs</rootDeviceType>
 <terminateOnStopInstance>false</terminateOnStopInstance>
 <machineIdentifier>ami-df6489b6</machineIdentifier>
 ..................
 ..................
 </serverType>

• • Note if you specify an EBS instance in the system definition and start the system, by default instance is launched the first time (i.e. new instance id and IP is assigned). On subsequent starting of the system EBS boot instances in the system are started with the same instance id that was assigned during the first time launching of the system. If you want to terminate or bundle the EBS boot instance you have to use the DashBoard. Unlike stopping, terminating the instance results in the releasing of the IP and instance ID for the instance. Current support of EBS boot instances doesn’t support scale up or auto-recovery

• Monitoring support for custom images (images not provided by Kaavo): Added automatic installation of monitoring agents on servers with Linux OS. This will allow users to use custom Linux images without being limited to the use of Kaavo provided images. Please refer to monitoring agent installation agent installation page to get a list of supported Linux versions. By default, any time a Linux OS based server is launched from IMOD N-Tier, IMOD N-Tier Engine checks if the monitoring agent is installed on the server, if the agent is not installed IMOD N-Tier Engine installs the agent. If users don’t want the monitoring agent to be installed on the server, they can disable the default behavior by adding the optional flag agentSetup="manual” for the serverType

<serverType role="default" min="1" max="4" agentSetup="manual">

• • Note it is not possible to set flags on individual servers. serverType(a group of servers of the same role) is the lowest granularity to specify flags

• Updated Rackspace sample System Definition: Updated the Kaavo provided sample Rackspace system definition by removing the action for installing the monitoring agent. As IMOD now support automatic installation of monitoring agents on all flavors of Linux for all integrated cloud providers, install monitoring action for installing and configuring the monitoring agent is no longer required in the system definition file

• Enhanced support for debugging custom actions: IMOD now logs exit code for the actions executed on the servers over SSH in the application centric system logs accessible from the LOG tab for the deployed systems. This gives users more visibility to the configuration and run-time management tasks. Also for debugging users can add the verbose flag to display up to last 10 lines of the message generated from the actions executed on the servers in the application centric logs. Detailed messages are logged on the servers in the same directory where the actions were executed in the log files for the corresponding actions (<action-name>.log)

<serverType role="default" min="1" max="4" logMode="verbose"> 

• Ability to connect to servers as a non-root user: Some images don’t allow users to connect as root user over SSH. The non-root username can be configured for IMOD engine to connect to the server by setting the sshUser attribute in the server tag.

<serverType role="default" min="1" max="2" >
 ............................
 ............................
 <sshUser>ubuntu</sshUser>                     
 ............................
 ............................
</serverType>

• Ability to manage servers without SSH connectivity: Sometime users only want to launch the servers and don’t want to connect to the server over SSH or have firewall rules to not allow IMOD to connect to certain servers over SSH. Users can now bring up multi-server systems using IMOD without IMOD engine waiting for SSH connectivity by just adding the optional checkSSH=”false” flag to the startup timeout in the server tag

<serverType role="default" min="1" max="2">
 <awsServer>
  ............................
  ............................
  <startupCount>1</startupCount>  
   <workflow>
    <startup timeout="300" checkSSH="false">
  ............................
  ............................
</serverType>

• List of server attributes available to the velocity engine: Published the list of server attributes that can be used within the velocity templates for dynamically generating scripts, code, or configuration files in any programming language. Please refer to the n-tier guide List of Server Attributes Available to Velocity Templates section for details.

Release 1.8.0 (December 10, 2009)

• System Definition Schema: On popular request we have released the XML schema for the IMOD System Definition File. Please note as we add new providers and functionality we will continue to enhance the XML schema, we will maintain the latest production schema at https://imod.kaavo.com/imod-system-definition-schema.xsd. For additional information on System Definition also refer to the N-tier System Definition Guide
• UI Wizard: Added UI Wizard to make it is easy to define and configure a system from scratch, view the video tutorial for more information
• Import/Export Deployments:Added Ability to export and import System Definitions to and from the local drive
• Monitoring Enhancements:
  • Added ability to view monitoring data for free swap memory and used swap memory
  • Added ability to view monitoring data for last 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and 1 hour
• Deployment Timeout Handling:Added ability to handle timeout conditions during deployment and server configuration by adding onTimeout attribute in the server startup workflow tag <startup timeout="300" onTimeout="Continue"/>
  • onTimeout="Abort" means the server will be shutdown and the rest of the system will continue
  • onTimeout="Continue" means the server will not be shutdown but still the rest of the system will continue
  • If we do not specify any onTimeout attribute, it will act according to the current default behavior, i.e. the tier and the system deployment will timeout and users have to manually abort the system and retry the deployment after addressing the issue responsible for the workflow timeout. See the following example of how to configure this within the serverType tag:

<serverType role="loadbalancer" min="1" max="8">
    ...............................
    ...............................
    ...............................
    <startupCount>2</startupCount>
    <workflow>
              <startup timeout="1200"  onTimeout="Continue"></startup>
              <shutdown/>
    </workflow>
    ...............................
    ...............................
</serverType>

Release 1.7.0 (November 2, 2009)

• Added ability to search application-centric system logs
• Added ability to schedule events to allow users to automatically execute application centric complex workflows for n-tier systems at the scheduled time; the scheduler basically triggers the event at the scheduled time and IMOD engine execute the corresponding workflow associated with the event
  • Ability to schedule complex or simple maintenance tasks to be performed automatically at the scheduled time, e.g. application specific backups, execution of application specific batch jobs, etc.
  • Ability to start/stop complex n-tier systems at the scheduled time

Release 1.6.0 (October 14, 2009)

• Added support for Rackspace Cloud, IMOD now supports following for Rackspace:
  • Application Centric n-tier configuration: With one click, IMOD automatically brings online one or multi-server systems, configures middleware, deploys application/workload, and starts all dependent services in a specified order
  • Automation: Ability to automate complex workflows to handle run-time production exceptions without human intervention
  • Monitoring and alerts: Users can monitor resources used by their applications and set up alerts to proactively manage application service levels
  • Application Centric Accounting: Ability to track usage of all servers used by an application so app owners know exactly the usage of resources for their application.
  • Example system definition for managing deploying and managing applications on Rackspace cloud
• Example system definition for deploying and managing Bitnami Images
• Added support for specifying Kernal Images and Ram Disk for Amazon EC2 servers. This will allow users over-ride Kernel (AKI) and RamDisk (ARI) for an image without having to rebundle the image. Following optional tags can be added to the Amazon Server type definition in the System Definition:
  • <kernelImage>aki-20c12649</kernelImage>
  • <ramDisk>ari-21c12648</ramDisk>

Release 1.5.0 (August 31, 2009)

• Custom Events: Event definition for triggering scale-up scale-down, recovery, or custom events can be defined from the drop down menu on the monitoring page even when the system (Application infrastructure) is not running. Events can be persisted, i.e. no need to redefine them on restarting the system
• Enhanced the format for defining automation (custom workflows) to give more flexibility to users. Going forward use this new format for defining, scale-up, scale-down, recovery, and any custom workflows as we will deprecate the older format
• Application Centric Logging: Added system level logging to have seperate logs for each deployed application infrastructure by adding new tab for system logs. This gives more transparency to each application owner on SLAs of the resources used by their application
• Application Centric Accounting: Added ability to track infrastructure usage for each managed application individually. This allows application owners to know the usage of resources by their application when multiple applications are deployed in the same account

Release 1.4.6 (July 09, 2009)

• Signed the code for SSH applet to prevent the unsigned warning message
• Implemented upper and lower limits on the number of servers based on server type in each tier to allow users to prevent auto-scaling up or auto-scaling down beyond the specified range
• Enhanced the 3 tier LAMP stack example system template to include auto-recovery event to recover the server and configure it automatically in the context of the application in case any of the servers dies
• Added quick start user guide for beginners

Release 1.4.5 (June 03, 2009)

• Automation for run-time service level management
  • Ability to add system level alerts
  • Ability to define custom events at system level
  • Ability to automatically execute custom actions in response to custom events
• Additional images for EU location
• Updated n-tier documentation
• Added example system definition template for Ruby on Rails

Release 1.4.4 (April 15, 2009)

• European region support
• Windows support
  • 256-bit encryption of elastic block storage for windows
  • monitoring support for windows
  • Kaavo public windows images (with out-of-the-box support for encryption and monitoring)
• Billing/Accounting system
  • Track your instance usage
  • View monthly billing information
• A LAMP stack example NTier system defintion file is available as a new Template. This example uses the php-colab application as an example. In this system, we have two Apache based front-end load-balancers (load-balanced via DNS round-robin), a php based application-tier, and a MYSQL cluster database back-end.

Release 1.4.2 (Feb 17, 2009)

• Added support for scale-up/scale-down in the system definition files. Now you can setup scale-up and scale-down actions to dynamically add more servers to a running system when the needed, and also to reduce the servers when the demand goes down.
• Kaavo public images are shown at a separate tab on the dash-board.
• Significant Performance improvements for the Graphical User Interface

GA Release - 1.4 (January 12, 2009)

• N-Tier: World's first application-centric, n-tier cloud computing automation
  • Ability to define a complete n-tier system in XML system definition file (SDF)
  • Launch a multi-tier system consisting of many servers using a single-click
  • Clone an entire system via single-click (e.g. clone DEV system to QA system)
  • Easily deploy a system starting from a template. Half a dozen system templates are provided as examples, ranging from a simple single-tier system with a java application on it, to a 3-tier system consisting of a MYSQL Cluster database, a JBOSS application server tier, and an Apache web-tier.
• Security: Full 256-bit security
  • Full volume level encryption, with elastic block storage volumes. You can create dynamic encrypted volumes, and attach them to running instances. All data on these volumes is encrypted.
  • Support for delegated users. Users in different roles have different access-levels to the application.
• Monitoring: Out-of-box support for monitoring your instances.
  • Monitor real-time graphs of the vitals (CPU, Memory, Disk Space, Bandwidth etc.)
  • Setup rule-based trigger alerts (e.g. "Notify me when used Disk Space goes above 70%")
• Automated Backups: Support for automated backups
  • Backups are scheduled via a scheduling service to backup automatically (daily, weekly, monthly etc.)
  • Support for automatic rotation of the backups, to limit the total snapshots.
• Kaavo Images: More than a dozen Kaavo images, that provide out-of-the-box:
  • 256-bit encryption
  • Pre-installed monitoring agents
  • Various flavors of Linux, both 32-bit and 64-bit versions
• Other:
  • Built-in secure command-shell to connect to any instance over ssh.
  • Built-in secure ftp (s-ftp)
  • Fully functional tradition dashboard for instance-level management

Fully Functional Trial

Free access to Kaavo's IMOD is available via fully functional trial. You can self-register anytime at https://imod.kaavo.com to take advantage of this.