Getting Started with Ravello

About Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service

With Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service, you can deploy your existing VMware or KVM based data center workloads on any public cloud such as Oracle Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud, as-is, without any modification to the virtual machines, network, or storage.

Ravello allows you to create replicas of your on-premises, multi-tier VMware or KVM based applications in the cloud. You can then create blueprints of each application, so you can quickly deploy multiple instances of the application for testing or other purposes.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service Terminology

Before you begin using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service you should be familiar with basic Ravello terminology.

Term	Definition
Hypervisor	Software which creates and runs virtual machines (VM).
Nested Virtualization	Running a virtual machine within another virtual machine.
Application design	A set of definitions that describe an application, including virtual machine images, supplied and required service interfaces, and connectivity, as applicable.
Application	Any set of virtual machines, network and storage devices and their configuration that you want to make available to users. An application also refers to an instance of an application that can be published or that is already running on the cloud. Multiple instances (or copies) of the same application can run at the same time.
Blueprint	A blueprint is a self-contained set of definitions that describe your application, which can be used to create instances and deploy them on the cloud. A blueprint comprises a snapshot of an application instance and is created from an application design.
Key Pairs	When working with generic or public VM templates, you can connect to VMs using predefined SSH key pairs. However, you can also add or import key pairs while creating a new application that is based on a public VM.
Publishing	Publishing is the process of deploying an application in a cloud environment. Publishing the application instance creates multiple virtual machines in the cloud and defines the network overlay.
Ravello Repo	A portal where users can share their blueprints, VMs, and disk images with others.

Interfaces to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service provides the following ways to access, create, and manage your Ravello applications.

Type of Access	Description	More Information
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service Web-based console	This console provides a graphical user interface to create, manage, and modify your application instances.	Accessing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service Using the Web Console
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service REST API	Code REST requests to call methods to programmatically create, manage, and modify the application instances you have created on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service.	Ravello REST API

Before You Begin with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service

Before you begin using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service, there are several steps you can take to prepare.

Understand the features of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service.
See About Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service.
Review your current virtual machine environment and consider your options for deployment in the cloud.
See Assessing your Deployment Scenario.

How to Begin with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service

To get started with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service, you must request a trial or paid subscription and activate the service.

To begin using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service:

Request a trial or purchase a subscription for Oracle Cloud Service.
See Subscribing to an Oracle Cloud Service Trial in Getting Started with Oracle Cloud.
Activate the service. See Activating Your Trial Subscription or Activating Your Order in Getting Started with Oracle Cloud.
Verify activation. See Verifying That Your Trial Is Running or Verifying That a Service Is Running in Getting Started with Oracle Cloud.

Accessing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service Using the Web Console

You can access the web console by setting up a Ravello account.

If you are the initial identity domain administrator or service administrator, Oracle Cloud sends you a ‘Welcome to Oracle Cloud’ email that contains your user name, your temporary password, the Identity Domain, the data center, and the URL for the My Services application. An Identity Domain controls the accounts of users who need access to service instances. It also controls the features that authorized users can access.
After you set up the My Services account, Oracle Cloud will send an email to set up your Ravello account.
Follow the instructions provided in the email and create an administrator account for Ravello. Add users and set permissions, see Users and Permissions Groups.

Note:
Note that the credentials for the primary administrator for the account on Oracle Public Cloud (My Services) may be different from the one on Ravello.

Accessing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service Using REST API

You can programmatically provision and manage Ravello by using a REST (REpresentational State Transfer) application programming interface (API).

Each REST API call maps to an HTTP request: getting an object (GET), adding an object (POST), updating an object (PUT), and deleting an object (DELETE). The HTTP response code indicates whether the request was successful. Each object for which you can perform the GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE requests is identified uniquely by its URI (Uniform Resource Identifier).

To access Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service by using the REST API you must use the REST endpoint URL that Oracle provided when your administrator subscribed to the service. See Ravello REST API.

Assessing your Deployment Scenario

Determine your deployment scenario and use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Ravello Service to build applications and migrate a diverse set of general purpose and high-performance workloads to the cloud.

Scenarios	Description	More Information
Creating and Deploying Ravello Applications to Cloud	Deploy your existing VMware or KVM-based data center workloads on leading Cloud providers, as-is, without any modification to the VMs, network, or storage.	In this scenario, you use the Ravello VM Import tool to upload your VMs or your entire application to Ravello. Then you create or verify the application in Ravello before you deploy it to the cloud. After you create and validate your application, you will publish your application to cloud.
Creating and Distributing Blueprints From the Published Ravello Applications	Create, manage, and distribute blueprints from the validated and published applications.	In this scenario, you save the published application as a blueprint and distribute it with others.
Deploying Ravello Applications to Cloud Using Blueprints	Using private and/or public blueprints that are already validated and available.	In this scenario, you will use the available blueprint and spin up as many applications as you need.