Intro to "Asgard"

Intro to Asgard

Author : Pritiman Panda Intro to Asgard

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Agenda

Introduction

What is Asgard ? – a few definitions

AWS Management Console vs Asgard

Features provided by Asgard

Asgard - Landscape

Advantages of using Asgard

Installation Steps

Additional Info

Things to be taken care of

Reference Links


We all must have heard about Netflix as one of the biggest Movie/TV Shows streaming site. But to

add on, it is also a game changer in the Technology front when it comes to experimenting and

advocating Open Source Products for Cloud based development and platforms.

Lot of Innovation and thoughts come over from Netflix. Some companies take it up as a reference

model for their Architecture design, implementations and other cloud offerings

Watch-out for latest happening at Netflix Tech Front - http://techblog.netflix.com/

Introduction

http://www.netflix.com/

http://techblog.netflix.com/


“Asgard” - a web interface for application deployments and cloud management.

Its a Self Service Tool used by Netflix for the past several years to deploy applications and services to the Amazon Cloud

Asgard is also considered as Netflix's home-built open source tool manages Amazon workloads. To add on Netflix is one of the

biggest users of AWS.

Asgard is named for the home of the Norse god of thunder and lightning, and since Asgard is where Netflix developers go to

control the clouds the name sounds appropriate

What is “Asgard “? – a few definitions

Amazon Web Services

Access the AWS functionalities via REST APIs

Asgard Web Interface


AWS Management Console v/s Asgard

Criteria AWS Management Console Asgard

Security

The credentials and the secret key has to be shared with every developer for accessing the AWS account.

The credentials and the secret keys are configured in the Config.groovy file at the Server end. The Asgard Portal can be accessed at ease, without dwelling into the password security management.

Logging and Audit

It is tough to debug and troubleshoot as the AWS does not expose any log of recent user actions on an account.

Logging and Audit Trail are integrated with the Asgard management system providing a lot of transparency and detail.

Conventions

With multiple users accessing the cloud and incorporating their changes, with no conventions, can end up in a unlabelled clutter and expensive place

Asgard enforces naming conventions in order to keep the cloud a saner place that is possible to audit and clean up regularly as things get stale, messy, or forgotten

Integration

AWS being a closed system, there is no scope for any integration touch points

Asgard being a open source product and console, provides a lot of flexibility to make changes and integrate with other external systems.

Automate Work Flow NAAsgard provides an intelligent mechanism for the deployment process wherein necessary steps can be performed to enable or disable instances/ASGs and monitor the Application Performance

To summarize, Asgard is the baby born out of the REST APIs exposed by AWS under the nursing of Netflix


Addressing to the pain points of the Amazon Web Service, Asgard provides

some of the following features based on the cloud management and

cluster maintenance interface :

load balancing,

auto-scaling,

launching,

security

single view for managing services, organized around each

application

maintains application registry in Amazon Simple DB

duration each instance of the application has been running and

when it was created

node details in a multi-node environment or cluster

troublesome and infected nodes can be removed – rollback

manage rolling push, in which all the nodes of a cluster can be

replaced one by one, without disrupting the operation of the

cluster as a whole

Features provided by Asgard


Asgard - Landscape

Business Application


Amazon Key or Account is required for every individual who wants to access the cloud environment and make changes and development on the AWS cloud. With the Asgard approach, the organization can help their employees to access the AWS without sharing the credentials and keys.

AWS lacks support for Auto Scaling Groups (ASGs). By leveraging ASG(provided by Asgard) customers using AWS can provide reliability, redundancy, cost savings, clustering, discoverability, ease of deployment, and the ability to roll back a bad deployment quickly

Asgard enforces conventions to make cloud a saner place, with the ability to audit and clean up regularly as things get stale, messy, or forgotten. This prevents us from making the cloud a unlabelled clutter, when accessed by multiple users in a Cloud Environment

AWS does not provide any Logging Mechanism from a user account and actions perspective, this is where Asgard becomes handy providing a auditability to the system.

Integrating with some in-house or external systems. But point to note, this what Netflix did by integrating with their inhouse systems like Jenkins and Discovery systems. Need to confirm how it works out if we want to leverage this Integration feature

From an automated and intelligent deployment perspective, Asgard can provide the multiple step approach to a single form submission.

Simple REST APIs can be exposed and published, hiding the complex steps from the user

Advantages of using Asgard


Download the Asgard WAR from the link : http://netflix.github.com/asgard/

Install Tomcat 6.x in your system

Make the following Changes to the server.xml in the folder ~/Tomcat6/conf/

https://github.com/Netflix/asgard/wiki/Tomcat-configuration

Delete all the contents in the ~/Tomcat/webapps/ folder

Copy the Asgard.war to the webapps folder

Start the Server

Hit the browser http://localhost:8080/init

Login with your AWS ID and Secret key

Reference Link : https://github.com/Netflix/asgard/wiki/Quick-Start-Guide

Installation Steps

http://netflix.github.com/asgard/

https://github.com/Netflix/asgard/wiki/Tomcat-configuration

http://localhost:8080/init

https://github.com/Netflix/asgard/wiki/Quick-Start-Guide


Snapshot


Where can I find the Source Code :

It has been open-sourced now and is available for public use and downloads at github

http://github.com/Netflix/asgard


Licensing :

Asgard is released under the Apache License, Version 2.0 – play with the project and make improvements

Additional Info

http://github.com/Netflix/asgard



Things to be taken care of

Ensure that you have Java6 in your system (NOT Java 7, Asgard is not compatible with the Java 7 and throws exceptions)

It works on Chrome, Firefox and other Browsers but NOT Internet Explorer


http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/06/asgard-web-based-cloud-management-and.html (ASGARD - Reference Screenshots and

reference for my slide content!! )

Asgard, the Grails App that Deploys Netflix to the Cloud (Slides 2012)

Building Cloud Tools for Netflix (Slides 2011)

Building Cloud Tools for Netflix (Video 2011)

Quick Start Installation Guide

Trouble Shooting Installation

REST-APIs

Please Note :

Most of the Contents in this Slide Deck are referenced from the Tech blogs at Netflix

Few Reference Links

http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/06/asgard-web-based-cloud-management-and.html

http://www.slideshare.net/joesondow/asgard-the-grails-app-that-deploys-netflix-to-the-cloud

http://www.slideshare.net/joesondow/building-cloudtoolsfornetflix-9419504

http://blip.tv/silicon-valley-cloud-computing-group/building-cloud-tools-for-netflix-5754984

https://github.com/Netflix/asgard/wiki/Quick-Start-Guide

https://github.com/Netflix/asgard/wiki/Troubleshooting

https://github.com/Netflix/asgard/wiki/REST-API


‘am still exploring this Open Source offering and will keep enriching this content based on the learning. If you have

some thoughts and reference information in this context please feel free to share them across.

Happy Learning!! :-)

Thoughts

Image Source : koshercaffeine.blogspot.com

https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=-4ZZWBKiK2eaGM&tbnid=WfJL8Iyo_fZiXM:&ved=0CAQQjB0&url=http://koshercaffeine.blogspot.com/2010/08/is-weird-soul-forced-to-have-bad.html&ei=B02FUbfqJdCSiAebmoG4BA&bvm=bv.45960087,d.aGc&psig=AFQjCNE4EOyX54ahOcDNWjab7v4ovyUPCA&ust=1367776828918458


Q & A


• http://www.freedigitalphotos.net for image• that-figures.blogspot.com for image• http://pschmidley.deviantart.com for image• www.germangames.com for image• http://techblog.netflix.com/• www.refinery29.com for image• karenpaynetableforone.wordpress.com for image• www.bloggingcage.com for image

Reference Links

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=FsVxM7oMEv_OBM&tbnid=aJVUOVDtZbkI-M:&ved=0CAQQjB0&url=http://that-figures.blogspot.com/2011/05/news-thor-tales-of-asgard-trailer.html&ei=-dGEUfrtCeWKiQeW9YCYDQ&bvm=bv.45960087,d.aGc&psig=AFQjCNGqEojHuPph7yof--bnt_9yiPRI9g&ust=1367745364335344

http://pschmidley.deviantart.com/

http://www.germangames.com/



http://www.refinery29.com/

https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=5qc0kkZ0r6E64M&tbnid=p8Uc_GFc1scNoM:&ved=0CAQQjB0&url=http://karenpaynetableforone.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/balancing-act/&ei=9k2FUY-CJs-ZiAexhYGgDg&bvm=bv.45960087,d.aGc&psig=AFQjCNEZO4zr16DxY82zGI-JBbwH-E6WfQ&ust=1367777112028949

https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=KbzgZjhYeBCIkM&tbnid=cXr_F2CjTNCjHM:&ved=0CAQQjB0&url=http://www.bloggingcage.com/link-building-strategies/&ei=TlyFUcqXMKfliAfxk4G4CQ&bvm=bv.45960087,d.aGc&psig=AFQjCNEKFqOEy-hsqSiX2MnctujqgMV1VQ&ust=1367780586468521


Thank You

Date post:	11-May-2015
Category:	Technology
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