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N1 Provisioning Server 3.1, Blades Edition, System Administration Guide

Chapter 1 N1 Provisioning Server Introduction

This chapter provides an introduction of the Infrastructure Fabric (I-Fabric) components and the N1 Provisioning Server. Later chapters of this guide describe in detail how to operate and perform day-to-day administrative tasks on the software and the I-Fabric.

This chapter discusses the following topics:

I-Fabric Overview

N1 Provisioning Server software provides a comprehensive infrastructure automation solution that enhances the visibility, and control of complex computing environments. An I-Fabric consists of various hardware components, such as blade system chassis, server blades, and load balancer blades, and the N1 Provisioning Server software. N1 Provisioning Server software controls how I-Fabric components interoperate. An I-Fabric, controlled and managed by N1 Provisioning Server software, combines computing and networking resources into a contiguous automated fabric of infrastructure that you deploy and reallocate to meet changing requirements. Resources are dedicated to a farm until returned to the common resource pool. With root access to devices, you can deploy any software or application onto the servers. Secure partitions enforced by N1 Provisioning Server software and methodologies enable you to exercise independent administrative control over each logical server farm.

Resources within an I-Fabric are accessed through the Control Center, a web-browser-based graphical user interface (GUI). This drag-and-drop interface enables you to design and deploy logical server farms. Within a design, you can define numerous characteristics, including topology, monitors, and alerts.

When you create a logical server farm design and apply it within the Control Center, N1 Provisioning Server software creates a logical description of the server farm design. The logical description is captured in the Farm Markup Language (FML), an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) dialect developed for N1 Provisioning Server software. FML enables the abstraction of design and configuration data for the deployment of actual physical resources. Abstraction of monitoring processes is captured using the Monitoring Markup Language (MML). Abstraction of the wiring configuration is captured using the Wiring Markup Language (WML).

I-Fabric Components

An I-Fabric integrates individually managed discontinuous networks, servers, and infrastructure devices into a coordinated, automated fabric. This fabric enables easy management, deployment, and redeployment of logical server farms. An I-Fabric is made up of three functional areas:

Control Plane

The control plane provides intelligence, management, and control of an I-Fabric. N1 Provisioning Server software, which provides the intelligence that enables an I-Fabric, resides within the control plane. The control plane consists of N1 Provisioning Server software, the Control Center server software, and the associated server hardware on which the software is deployed.

Fabric Layer

The fabric layer is a highly integrated Ethernet environment based on industry-standard networking technologies. The fabric layer contains the networking infrastructure and switching fabric that ties the control plane and resource pool together.

Resource Pool

The resource pool consists of infrastructure resources, such as Sun FireTM B1600 Blade System Chassis, load balancer blades, and server blades that function as resource pool servers for deployment to server farms. The resource pool of an I-Fabric contains all resource pool servers capable of being provisioned to a farm.

N1 Provisioning Server Configuration

The N1 Provisioning Server is set up in the following configuration:

Logical Server Farms

The control plane, fabric layer, and resource pool work together to dynamically create logical server farms within. Logical server farms are securely allocated from the resource pool and managed by N1 Provisioning Server software. N1 Provisioning Server software creates logical server farms from the resources available within the resource pool. Logical server farms are analogous to traditional, manually built, dedicated server farms except that you can create, grow, shrink, and delete them as data structures that reside within N1 Provisioning Server software.

Secure partitions enforced by N1 Provisioning Server software and methodologies enable you to exercise independent administrative control over each logical server farm. Although you can have administrative access on all devices within a logical server farm, you cannot view, access, or modify the devices or data associated with a different logical server farm unless you have the appropriate permission.

Figure 1–1 Logical Server Farms Provisioned Within the Resource Pool of an I-Fabric

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N1 Provisioning Server Components

The N1 Provisioning Server provides a comprehensive set of infrastructure automation and management capabilities. The N1 Provisioning Server comprises two primary components: the Control Center and the control plane.

Operating Environments

N1 Provisioning Server software runs on the SolarisTM 8 operating environment.

Control Center Software

The Control Center is the GUI to the N1 Provisioning Server software. You deploy and manage logical server farms through the Control Center. For more details about the Control Center, see the N1 Provisioning Server 3.1, Blades Edition, Control Center Management Guide.

N1 Provisioning Server Software

The N1 Provisioning Server software resides on the control plane server and provides the infrastructure automation services required to manage and deploy logical server farms within an I-Fabric. At a high level, the N1 Provisioning Server software manages the logical-to-physical mappings between a logical server farm and the physical resources assigned to it.

N1 Provisioning Server software comprises the following roles and software components:

N1 Provisioning Server software provides six key areas of infrastructure automation services:

Provisioning and Configuration

The ability to automatically provision and configure resources within the resource pool of an I-Fabric is a core capability of the N1 Provisioning Server. The N1 Provisioning Server manages and automates the ongoing evolution of logical server farms and their initial activation. As resources are added or deleted on server farms, the N1 Provisioning Server continues to manage and automatically configure all virtual wiring as well as DHCP and DNS services.

Flexing

Flexing enables you to add or delete capacity on a farm. N1 Provisioning Server software automatically provisions and configures resources. N1 Provisioning Server software provides two types of flexing services:

Software Image Management

The N1 Provisioning Server manages software images and configurations of servers. The N1 Provisioning Server supports creation and management of two categories of images: global images and account images.

I-Fabric Monitoring

The N1 Provisioning Server actively monitors the state and health of devices in an I-Fabric. Monitoring provides visibility of an I-Fabric and supports failover and recovery of devices or the restarting of failed processes.

Failure and Recovery of Devices in the Resource Pool

The N1 Provisioning Server automatically detects and then replaces failed devices in the resource pool, such as resource pool servers and load balancers. The failed device is replaced with a device of the same type from the available devices in the resource pool. The replacement device automatically takes on the network configuration of the failed device.

Load Balancer Failover Modes

Load balancers support the following failover modes:

A path failover occurs when one interface to the router fails. In that case, the path on the failed interface is automatically restored on the live interface. In a high availability setup, one load balancer device is on standby as the secondary load balancer, while the primary, active load balancer device handles processing. If the primary load balancer fails, the secondary load balancer automatically takes over processing. A single device failover situation is resolved manually through the replaceFailedDevice tool.

Physical Infrastructure Management

As a part of the N1 Provisioning Server initialization process, the N1 Provisioning Server performs resource and wiring validation. This validation enables the CPDB to have a complete physical topology map of all resources within the I-Fabric. The wiring validation provides an automated way of confirming the physical wiring map of all devices within an I-Fabric. The integrity of the physical wiring of the resources within an I-Fabric enables the N1 Provisioning Server to successfully manage the virtual wiring of a logical server farm.

Description Languages

N1 Provisioning Server software uses description languages based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML) to create a digital blueprint of a farm's logical structure. This logical blueprint facilitates the automation of many manual tasks involved in constructing logical server farms. N1 Provisioning Server software employs the following description languages:

I-Fabric Security

N1 Provisioning Server software and methodologies provide a multitenant infrastructure that can be securely partitioned and allocated. The benefits of multitenancy, such as resource optimization through reallocating and the ability to flex from a common resource pool, are achievable only if a rigorous security model and architecture are in place. An I-Fabric provides multiple types of security enforcement and ensures that security exists between logical server farms.

Within an I-Fabric, security is implemented at the following levels: