Resource types

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management is structured to use two general categories of resources:

• Infrastructure resources — These are the actual data center resources on which services are hosted. Servers, storage devices, and networks are all examples of infrastructure resources. BMC Cloud Lifecycle management groups them as compute, network, and storage resource types. Infrastructure resources can be physical or virtual. Infrastructure resources are onboarded to the cloud by Managing resources.
• Cloud resources — These are abstractions of infrastructure resources, and normalize the management of infrastructure resources. Compute resource containers, network zones, and virtual firewalls are all examples of cloud resources. As with infrastructure resources, BMC Cloud Lifecycle management groups cloud resources as compute, network, and storage resource types. Unlike infrastructure resources, cloud resources are always virtual.

Network resources

Network resources are infrastructure resources that are capable of transferring data. Network resources include:

• Locations, which represent the named location of a Wide Area Network (WAN).
• Servers, routers, switches, load balancers and other network equipment.
• IP address pools, which are assigned based on BMC Network Automation container blueprint policies.

BMC Network Automation (BBNA) is the resource provider for network resources.

Network resources are organized by pods, network containers, and network zones. For more information about the organization of network resources, see Network resources overview.

Compute resources and compute resource pools

Compute resources are infrastructure resources that provide processing capabilities in the cloud. For example, virtual clusters, virtual resource pools, and physical servers are all compute resources. BMC Server Automation is the resource provider for compute resources, which include virtual clusters. Compute resources are grouped into pools called compute resource pools, which are assigned to network containers. In this way, network resources provide the organization for compute resource pools. For more information about the organization of compute resources, see Compute resources and compute resource pools overview.

Storage resources

Storage resources are infrastructure resources that enable you to allocate physical storage space with a service request. For example, a virtual hard drive is a storage resource. NetApp is the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management provider of storage resources. Storage resources are delivered as separate offerings, which end users can request to supplement other services. For more information about storage resources, see Storage resources overview.