Architecture
This section provides an overview of the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution architecture, including its tiers, product components and management layers. The topic includes the following sections:
Description of BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management tiers and product components
The product components that are available to you for installation from the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution depend on the deployment templates: Compact, Small, or Medium deployment. The BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution is divided into two logical tiers, the Control Tier and the Workload Tier. The Control Tier product components contain all BMC applications that are required for managing the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution. The Workload Tier product components enable you to scale the solution for multiple data center locations, either physical or logical.
The Control tier consists of integrated sets of applications that are organized into the following functional categories:
- Cloud Management, Monitoring, and Automation Infrastructure
- Cloud Provisioning
- Cloud Self-Service and Service Catalog
Control Tier product components
Product component | Description |
|---|---|
BMC AR System Server – Cloud Portal and Database (Primary and Secondary) | Installs the BMC Remedy AR System server and its components. This host is your administrator server. The installer includes the following applications:
|
Platform Manager - Cloud Portal | The Cloud Portal installs the BMC AR System server extensions on BMC AR System Server – Cloud Portal and Database - Primary. |
BMC Remedy AR System Mid-Tier | In the Small and Medium deployment template, this option installs the BMC Remedy Mid Tier. It serves as a client of the BMC Remedy AR System server and as a server to the browser. The mid tier enables you to view BMC Remedy AR System applications on the web and access the BMC Remedy AR System server from a web server. |
Atrium Core - Web Registry Components | The BMC Atrium Web Registry component provides a web-based interface into the Cloud CMDB through which the BMC Network Automation component registers and manages network configuration items (CIs). It includes the following:
|
BMC Network Automation | Mechanism by which the cloud solution enacts change in the environment. Within BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management, BMC Network Automation helps to create network containers, network blueprints, and pods. It also creates virtual LAN segments, adds virtual LAN segments to specific pods, configures Layer 2 and Layer 2 services, adds virtual machines to existing load balancer pools, and assigns IP addresses (IP address management). For more information, see the BMC Network Automation documentation.
|
BMC Server Automation - App Server & Console | Installs primary application server and Automation console. Creates two application instance: one configuration server and one job server. For more information, see the BMC Server Automation documentation.
|
BMC Server Automation - App Server (MAS) | (optional) Installed on a secondary computer to provide Multiple Application Server (MAS) support for high-availability (HA) environments. Creates two application instances: one configuration server and one job server. |
BMC Server Automation - File Server (Optional installation) | Server used by BMC to store large snapshots of files, Network Shell scripts, BLPackages, patches, Windows installables, and other types of information not easily stored in a database. |
BMC Atrium Orchestrator - Server | The following components are installed with the BMC Atrium Orchestrator Server:
|
BMC Atrium Orchestrator - configuration distribution peer (HA) | For BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management, the grid is licensed to house two CDPs in high-availability (HACDP) mode. |
Platform Manager - Cloud DB Extensions | Installs Cloud database extensions on the server where the BMC AR System Sever Cloud DB is installed. The installation includes Persistence Manager, which enables the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution to store and retrieve information from BMC AR System Server - Cloud Database. |
Cloud Platform Manager | Installs the following components:
|
Workload Tier product components
Product component | Description |
|---|---|
Pre-boot execution environment (PXE) Server | Component used for the unattended provisioning of operating systems onto servers. |
BMC Server Automation - Advance Repeater | Provides scalable transportation of data over wide-area networks, and is an alternate option when configuring file servers or repeater servers. |
BMC Network Automation - Device Agent | Performs configuration backup, restore, merge, load OS image, and other configuration actions. By default, devices are managed by the Local Device Agent installed on the application server. |
Overview of the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution architecture
BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management provides an end-to-end automated lifecycle management solution for cloud-based IT hosting environments. It focuses on the planning, governance, provisioning, operation, administration and maintenance of cloud services, the run-time environments and infrastructure resources needed to sustain them, and the management services that compose BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management itself.
BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management is a general-purpose, one-size-fits-all management solution for cloud hosting environments. It can manage environments that reside entirely on-premise or off-premise, and hybrid environments that are hosted partially on-premise and off-premise.
BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management can manage hosting environments that use physical or virtual compute, storage, and network resources. It can also manage environments that use cloud resources, including resources and services offered by other IaaS, PaaS and SaaS clouds. It can also support a cloud-of-clouds model, in which a cloud hosting environment managed by BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management is composed of two or more other cloud hosting environments also managed by BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management.
BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management is fully multitenant aware. It can support simultaneous use of the cloud by multiple tenants that can request, deploy, and operate services independently.
BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management architecture
Functional architecture
Users
BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management supports the following types of users: cloud administrators and cloud tenants. Cloud administrators are responsible for the overall operation, administration, and maintenance of the cloud hosting environments, and for services hosted in the cloud on behalf of the cloud tenants.
Cloud tenants are the users of the cloud. Cloud tenants can be individuals or groups of individuals. Tenant users fill the following roles: cloud end users, who request services, and cloud organization administrators, who manage the portion of the cloud infrastructure and the services that belong to a given tenant.
For more information about BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management roles, see Getting-started-by-user-role.
Consoles
Cloud users access the cloud through the following consoles:
- BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management My Cloud Services console — Enables users and administrators to request, deploy, and operate service offerings from the Service Catalog
- BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management Administration Console — Enables cloud administrators to manage the cloud and the services that it hosts
For more information about BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management Consoles, see Using-the-My-Cloud-Services-console and Overview-of-workspaces.
Service Catalog
The Service Catalog contains the service offerings that are available for consumption by cloud users. Cloud administrators maintain the Service Catalog by creating, modifying, and deleting service offerings. They can also control which offerings in the Service Catalog are available to each tenant. For more information about the Service Catalog, see Service Catalog overview.
Cloud Database
The Cloud Database contains operational state and configuration information about the objects managed by the cloud. These managed objects include service offering instances, virtual cloud resources, and physical and virtual infrastructure resources. If a compatible enterprise Configuration Management Database is present, you can synchronize the Cloud Database with it in real time.
Product Catalog and Definitive Media Library
The Product Catalog and Definitive Media Library (DML) list all software that can be provisioned in the cloud. The Product Catalog does not store the software itself. Instead, it contains a unique reference to each piece of software, while the software itself remains in native repositories such as the BMC Server Automation software repository or the Amazon AWS AMI repository.
The Product Catalog also contains software metadata, such as software and hardware requirements pertaining to software provisioning, as well as other data used during software configuration. Cloud administrators create and maintain entries in the Product Catalog by using interfaces provided by the Product Catalog.
Cloud blueprints
Cloud blueprints define cloud services and resources from different points of view. BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management uses the following cloud blueprints:
- Service blueprints describe the functional structure of a given service offering, including its applications and communication paths. They also define how a service offering is to be deployed under different circumstances. Each service offering in the Service Catalog has a set of service blueprints used for its instantiation. Cloud administrators define and maintain service blueprints by using the BMC Atrium Blueprint Studio software. For more information about service blueprints, see Service blueprints overview.
- Network container blueprints define the physical and logical segmentation, and the architecture of the cloud network. Network container blueprints incrementally grow and organize the cloud capacity. Cloud administrators create and maintain network container blueprints by using the BMC Network Automation software. For more information about network container blueprints, see Importing-network-container-blueprints.
Infrastructure resources
Cloud infrastructure resources represent physical or virtual data center resources that host service offerings in the cloud. BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management uses compute, storage, network, and software infrastructure resources, including the following examples and other software deployable in the cloud:
- Firewalls
- Load balancers
- Local disks
- Routers
- SAN and NAS devices
- Virtual clusters
- Virtual hosts
For more information about infrastructure resources, see Resource-types.
Cloud resources
Cloud resources are virtual resources used to abstract similar types of resources, as follows, and to establish a normalized interface for their management:
Compute resource pool — Abstracts compute resources, including servers, virtual machines, and cloud compute capacity. For more information about compute resource pools, see Compute-resources-and-compute-resource-pools-overview.
- Network container — Abstracts cloud network designs. For more information about network containers, see Network-resources-overview.
Cloud providers
Cloud providers are software programs that act as element managers for different types of resources, platforms, and services consumed by the cloud. BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management uses the following provider types:
- Control — Controls cloud resources
- Telemetry — Obtains monitoring data about the hosted services and the cloud infrastructure
- Advice — Obtains advice about how to manage the cloud infrastructure and hosted services
- Resource — Allocates and provisions resources that are required for service hosting and normal operation of the cloud infrastructure
At installation, BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management includes the following providers, based on existing BMC products:
- BMC Server Automation — A control and resource provider for various types of infrastructure compute resources, such as physical servers, virtual machines, virtual machine clusters, and virtual cluster resource pools
- BMC Network Automation — A control and resource provider for network resource providers, such as IP addresses, routers, firewalls, load balancers, and VLANs
- TrueSight Infrastructure Management or BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management — A telemetry provider for virtual compute infrastructure resources
Cloud Workload Manager
The Cloud Workload Manager instantiates service offerings selected from the Service Catalog. It also administers and maintains those services based on policies defined in the Cloud Policy Database.
Offering instantiation entails decomposing a service offering into its individual components, based on the service blueprint associated with a service request, and initiating runtime platform provisioning requests for each component of the offering. After appropriate runtime environments have been provisioned, the Cloud Workload Manager performs final assembly and configuration of the offering instance.
Cloud Platform Manager
The Cloud Platform Manager provisions, operates, administers, and maintains runtime platform instances.
Provisioning of runtime platform instances entails decomposing the runtime platform into an application, based on the service definition associated with a service request, and initiating infrastructure resource provisioning requests for each runtime platform instance. After appropriate infrastructure resources have been provisioned, the Cloud Platform Manager performs final assembly and configuration of each runtime platform instance.
Cloud Resource Manager
The Cloud Resource Manager manages cloud infrastructure resources, including their onboarding, organization, assignment, and allocation.
Onboarding of new infrastructure resources entails registering resource provider instances with the Cloud Resource Manager. After resources have been onboarded the Cloud Resource Manager enables cloud administrators to group resources into resource pools and to assign resource pools to network containers. In this way, cloud administrators can better partition available resources for use in the cloud.
Cloud Service Governor
The Cloud Service Governor orchestrates workload management, platform management, and resource management operations based on policies and rules defined by cloud administrators to provisioning hosted service offerings. The Cloud Service Governor also distributes and subsequently enforces operational policies across BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management components.