Cloudaware Applications - Overview

CloudAware Application is a logical unit that allows to organize resources according to a naming convention or a tag, or any other custom logic customers wish to apply. 

Cloudaware Applications may be created to differentiate:

• Department, Team, Site, Project within your organization

• Customers, if you are an MSP

• Purchasers, if you are a reseller, etc

Creating a Cloudaware application also makes sense in such cases when, for example:

1) there are AWS/Azure/GCE and Physical servers in your Cloudaware environment and you need to provide access to view AWS data only;

2) only one specific AWS instance should be available for the application user, etc. 

Note that the sooner you create the application, the better since billing and cost data is not retrospective - it may be collected and shown in a Cloudaware application only starting the day when the application was created.

Key Features

• Multi-cloud and non-cloud support

• Cascades provide the ability to attach object hierarchies by attaching a single object

• Inventory automation using auto-attachment rules

• The ability to attach objects that are not taggable or exceed the tag limit

Prerequisites

Think of resources that should be attached to the Cloudaware application. Consider the logic that can be used for attaching assets in question to different tiers of the application.

Create Cloudaware Application

1.  Log in to Cloudaware account. Locate the section CLOUDAWARE in Navigator → Applications. 

2. Click New CloudAware Application.

3. Give the application a proper name. Click Create. If everything is fine, you will see a success message. 

4. Click Go To Application Settings to create tiers.

5. Click Add Tier(1). Give the tier a meaningful name(2). Click Add Tier(3) to save.

6. Locate the resources in question on a list view, e.g. Running Instances. Check the boxes and click Attach To The Application.

7. Select the appropriate application and a tier. Review the objects that will be attached and click Attach.

If a warning below pops up, one or several selected objects are already attached to another application:

Continue OR if it is preferable, detach them clicking Detach Objects.

Cascades

Consistency is one of the main challenges customers face when managing their cloud and non-cloud environment. One of the best practices is to follow relationships between objects and use these relationships to get consistent and auto-updatable inventory.

Cloudaware applications support cascades, meaning that all related objects will be cascadingly attached once a resource is attached to the application. For example, once you attach an AWS EC2 Instance, all corresponding EBS Volumes or Network Interfaces will also be attached.

Considerations:

1. When selecting an object to attach to a Cloudaware application, check if another object is above it in the hierarchy that can be connected first. For example, it's better to attach AWS ELB Load Balancer than related instances, it's better to attach AWS Elastic Beanstalk Application than AWS Elastic Beanstalk Environment, and it's always better to attach URLs.

2. Try to minimize manual attachments. For example, there is a logic for selecting objects that need to be attached to a specific application. Implementing that logic in an auto-attachment process is much better because Cloudaware will keep track of new assets that comply with the defined logic. If you still need to add some objects manually, attach only truly static resources.

Note that the cascades are sound but only work for extensive services with many interconnected objects. What should one do with all objects that have no relationships with each other? The answer is to implement the process that will monitor assets, automatically validate them against defined rules, and choose the application accordingly. These are application auto-attachment rules. Learn more