Defining service blueprints and creating service offering instances
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After you have mapped the tenants to the network containers, you then can define your service blueprint, add application parameters to your service deployment definition, prepare the service offering instance, and define your service offering options in the Service Catalog.
These procedures follow the typical BMC Cloud Lifecyle Management workflow. Be aware of the following guidelines that are specific to Amazon Elastic Computer Cloud (Amazon EC2) provider instances:
- The Amazon Machine Image (AMI) entry in the service blueprint must have the placeholder OS entry "BladeLogic" associated with it.
- The AMI entry is defined as an installable resource in the service blueprint.
- The availability zone and virtual private cloud have unique label details.
- Three unique application parameters are available: BmcSshInstancekey, BmcSecurityGroup, and BmcAssignVpcPublicIp.
- You add AMI variants as service offering options in the Service Catalog.
The following topics provide information and instructions for performing this task:
To verify available operating systems
The Amazon EEC2 implementation relies on BMC Server Automation's Publish Product Catalog Job to create a placeholder catalog entry in BMC Atrium CMDB. This placeholder catalog entry enables an OS package to be associated with the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) component entry in the service blueprint. The placeholder OS entry is of the type BladeLogic.
- From the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management Administration Console, choose the Service Blueprint workspace.
- Click the New icon to open the Service Blueprint Definition window.
- Under the Components section, click the New icon to display the Component Details - Operating System tab. The available OS or systems are displayed. In this example, the selected placeholder OS entry is DummyOS which is associated with the type BladeLogic.
If no OS packages are available, launch a Publish Product Catalog Job in BMC Server Automation to make a package available to BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management. See Publishing the Product Catalog Job. The OS package, even if it is a placeholder, must be present before you can create a service blueprint.
To create a service blueprint
To create a service blueprint for an Amazon EC2 instance, you can follow the general service blueprint creation procedure. However, you should follow the guidelines that describe the distinctions for service blueprints that are created for Amazon EC2 instances.
- In the Service Blueprint window, click the New icon to open the Service Blueprint Definition window.
- Follow the steps for creating a service blueprint. See Building a Service Blueprint and related procedures.
To select a software package for deployment
Before you can deploy software on your Amazon EC2 instance, ensure that you have installed an RSCD agent on your custom Amazon AMI (see To create a custom Amazon Machine Image).
- For your Amazon EC2 Service Blueprint, select the component under Service Blueprint Definition > Service Definition and click the Edit Component icon to open the Component Details dialog box.
In the Component Details dialog box, select the Software Packages subtab. In this example, the software package Create Linux User has been added.
Resource Set Details: Compute Resources
AMI variants, which are defined in the underlying Amazon_EC2 integration module, are the bases of the CPU and memory value selections. The CPU and memory selections are retrieved based on the variant names defined by the XML code of the integration module in BMC Atrium Orchestrator Development Studio:
The available predefined AMI variant choices are as follows:
Instance type | Description | Variant name |
|---|---|---|
Standard small instance | 1741 MB memory, 1 CPU | m1.small |
Standard medium instance | 3840 MB memory, 2 CPU | m1.medium |
Standard large instance | 7680 MB memory, 4 CPUs | m1.large |
Extra large instance | 15360 MB memory, 8 CPUs | m1.xlarge |
Micro instance | 613 MB memory, 2 CPUs | t1.micro |
High-memory extra large instance | 17511 MB memory, 6.5 CPUs | m2.xlarge |
High-memory double extra large instance | 35021 MB memory, 13 CPUs | m2.2xlarge |
High-memory quadruple extra large instance | 70042 MB memory, 26 CPUs | m2.4xlarge |
High-CPU medium instance | 1741 MB memory, 5 CPUs (2 virtual cores with 2.5 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud units each) | c1.medium |
High-CPU extra large instance | 7168 MB memory, 20 CPUs | c1.xlarge |
Cluster Compute Quadruple Extra Large Instance | 23552 MB memory, 33 CPUs | cc1.4xlarge |
Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large Instance | 61952 MB memory, 88 CPUs | cc2.8xlarge |
Cluster GPU Quadruple Extra Large Instance | 22528 MB memory, 33 CPUs | cg1.4xlarge |
When you specify CPU Count and Size (MB) values under Resource Set Details > Compute Resources, the underlying workflow looks for the closest match based on the variant name. In the following example, the CPU Count of 1 and a Size (MB) of 1741 MB are specified for the installable resource ami-50dd5160, a custom AMI you had selected and then entered into the Product Catalog (see Creating-product-catalog-entries). 
In this case, a match exists between the specified values and the variant name m1.small. If a match is not found, the workflow returns the following error message:
No EC2 instance type found for following CPU and Memory combination.
Resource Set Details:Network Resources
- When completing information on the Network Resources tab, only certain parameters of the NIC network configuration subtab are supported. The subtabs Virtual Load Balancer Pools, Virtual Load Balancer Pool Entries, and Remote Access Ports are not supported.
The following examples show Availability Zone and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network identifiers:
Network Container
Label details
Availability Zone
Its Label is Customer, always with one network interface card (NIC).
Virtual Private Cloud
Its Label includes the subnet IDs of the subnets contained in the VPC
The following example is an availability zone selection with the customer label:
The following example is a VPC selection with a subnet ID as its Label. This example was specified earlier in Availability Zones and VPCs:
- When working with the NIC subtab, keep in mind the following:
- Use only one NIC. Multiple NICs are not supported and therefore should not be added.
- Neither a static nor a dynamic public IP address is supported.
- The Assign NAT Address option is not supported for VPCs.
Service Deployment Definitions
For the Service Deployment Definition, you can add the following application parameters:
Application parameter | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|
BmcSshInstancekey |
| SSH key name that denotes the SSH key pair you generated through Amazon Web Services (AWS). The value name must exactly match the key pair name you specified in AWS. The data type is string. See To get an SSH key pair for more information. |
BmcSecurityGroups |
| Enables an EC2 instance to be placed within a security group (firewall). This security group allows RSCD agent traffic through port 4750 and remote access through an SSH or an RDP port. All comma-separated values should match the security group IDs you specified in AWS. The data type is string. If you select the Enabled option, BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management end users are able to control firewall policies for a server. See To create security groups. |
BmcAssignVpcPublicIp |
| Indicates whether an elastic IP (static, public address) can be assigned to a virtual cloud. This is a non-editable parameter. The data type is string or boolean. The data value is either true or false, and is case sensitive. In this example, the value is set to true because this Amazon EC2 instance is being provisioned to a VPC. See Availability Zones and Virtual Private Clouds. |
None of these parameters are required out-of-the-box. However, using the Add Parameter or Edit Parameter option, you can specify its label and default value, following the guidelines described in the preceding table. You can indicate whether the user entry is Enabled or Required. (You must enable the user entry option before specifying that the user entry is required.)
For more information, see Configuring service blueprint parameters.
To prepare the service offering instance
You create and test an Amazon EC2 instance as you would any service offering. For detailed procedures, see Creating Services.
To set service offering options
You set service offering options for Amazon EC2 instances much as you would for other options. For background information and the procedure for defining options, see Service-Catalog-options-and-option-choices. For information and the procedure for preparing service offering instances, see Creating Services.
AMI variants distinguish the options available for Amazon EC2 offering instances. Like other service options, you add them to the service offering definition in the Service Catalog.
The following example shows the Options Editor listing the choices for an AMI Variant option.
The next example shows an AMI variant attached to an offering as an option:
To make the requestable offering definition
You define your Amazon EC2 requestable offering much as you would any other offering, as described in Creating-a-requestable-offering-definition.
For the Amazon EC2 definition, you select EC2 for the Type value, as shown in the following example:
