Tagging recommendations and examples

This topic provides examples for creating and assigning tags and tag groups to determine the placement of user-requested services within the cloud.

You can use tags and tag groups:

• To identify a specific resources to modify (for example, you may want to update only the memory for your database servers but not for web servers)
• To place a service on the appropriate infrastructure (for example, a PCI (Payment Card Industry) server is placed into a PCI network container and a PCI compute pool)
• For documentation purposes (not discussed in this topic)

The following sections provide examples of using tagging for the first two items. For more information about tags, see Creating-tag-groups-and-tags and Assigning-a-tag-to-an-object.

Using tags to identify a resource to modify when setting option choices

The following example describes how you could use tags to identify a resource to use for a option choice.

1. Create two different tag groups: a tag group called Resource Sets and a tag group called Components.
2. Populate the Resource Sets tag group with some generic tags such as All Servers, DB Servers, Middleware Servers, and Web Servers. You could then tag every resource set with the tags Resource Sets > All Servers and Resource Sets > <xxx> where <xxx> equals the application tier.
3. When building options, you can use the Resource Set tags to select a component that you want to modify (such as memory or CPU).
4. Populate the Components tag group with a generic All Components tag. You can then add other generic tags as needed.
5. Tag all components with the Components > All Components tag. This tag enables you to place additional software on all components.

Using tags to place a service on the appropriate infrastructure

The following example describes how you could use tags to place a service on the appropriate infrastructure.

1. Determine how you want to group resources and create the appropriate tag groups and tags. You could group resources by:
   • Service levels (for example, Bronze, Silver, Gold)
   • Application tiers (for example, web, middleware, database)
   • Compliance levels (for example, compliant, non-compliant)
   • Business function (for example, Marketing, Sales, R&D)
   • Business criticality (for example, development, production)
2. Determine how to place the resources and apply tags to the applicable objects (for example, tenant or service blueprint). You could place resources by:
   • Tenant (for example, place marketing in marketing pools and networks)
   • Service blueprint (for example, place Web Tiers on public networks and web compute pools)
   • An Option Choice at runtime — If you are going to use Option Choices to determine placement, create those options to set either the tenant or service blueprint tags. The recommendation for tagging using Option Choices is to first identify the resource set using the generic Resource Sets tag group (for example, Resource Sets > All) and to then set the appropriate placement tag (for example, Business Criticality > DEV).
3. Apply tags to the compute resource pools and network containers.
4. Create a policy based on the tags. You can write a policy for placement of a service into a:
   • Network Container
   • Compute Pool
   • Disk Repository Pool

For each of the above categories you can write a policy that matches tags between service blueprints and available resources and between tenants and available resources (note that option tags must use one of those two objects). For more information about policies, see Policy management overview and Creating-policies. Make sure that you select the right resource category. For example, if you write a network container policy, you affect only the placement into a specific network container. Keep in mind that your network container must have access to the compute pool (see Cloud Admin Portal > Resource Management > Network Containers > Compute Pool Mapping) into which you are placing the service.

Related topics

Policy-management-overview
Creating-tag-groups-and-tags
Assigning-a-tag-to-an-object