Use > Broker Services

Broker Services

Brokering simplifies the process of making Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure compute capabilities accessible to CSA. It provides a streamlined administrative experience comprised of several stages to enable the subscribers to provision VMs in the Cloud using MPP.

Manual creation of service designs and offerings can be complicated and is not always necessary. The Cloud Gateway introduces an accelerated method for making cloud compute available to CSA. In many cases this generated content can be used as-is, but also can be used as a starting point to customize particular details (iconography, copy, pricing, and so on).

AWS and Azure compute images are aggregated into the Brokering UI where the Service Business Manager can search and filter them to identify an image useful for the business. Once identified, the selected image can be automatically translated into a CSA Service Offering. This Service Offering can then be published in CSA and made available to subscribers via the MPP.

When a service provider wants a number of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure images to be available for the CSA user, the provider must:

  • Search and filter AWS for the images that meet the user's criteria

  • Manually cut-and-paste the information from filtered images into CSA to create CSA offerings

  • Search through Azure, filtering while comparing manually the Azure images to the AWS images, then manually cut-and-paste the information from filtered images into CSA to create CSA offerings

    The Filter option in Brokering helps the user to overcome the above manual tasks and enables the user:

    • In aggregating and normalizing images from AWS and Azure.

      NOTE
      In CSA Provider menu, Create Resource Provider with credentials (Access key ID and Secret access key) for AWS. For more information, see Creating Properties for Cloud Brokering in CSA.
      This will generate an event that will communicate to the AWS agent to provide all the images.

    • Provide an UI to enter the filter criteria

    • Display the much smaller and more manageable filter results

    • To choose what to make available in CSA, with a click of a Create Offering button
    • Publish these offerings into catalogs in CSA

The following stages define a typical workflow when working with Brokering:

For more information on each stage, see:

Aggregation

Selecting a Cloud Image to Import into CSA

Offering Creation

Publishing offerings

Aggregation

Similar to travel websites, the Brokering UI presents a consolidated or “aggregated” view of services from multiple cloud providers such as AWS and Azure.

This unified view provides a centralized location where relevant cloud services can be identified and quickly made available to CSA consumers.

Selecting a Cloud Image to Import into CSA

Brokering acts as an interface between the CSA user and the Amazon/Azure. The unified view in the Brokering UI makes it easy to browse and search consolidate cloud offerings and helps the user to identify cloud Image which meets the needs of the business unit and makes it available for purchase in CSA MPP.

For accessing the Brokering UI to select a cloud image into CSA:

  • Navigate to My Applications side-bar menu.

    • Select Brokering and then select Filtering option.
    Note:
    If you search a image and unable to locate it, a Quick tour is run in responsive mode which shows how to search, filter, and provides search results and then Ends tour.
    • In the Filtering menu, select the required Provider Type (Amazon, Microsoft Azure, or All).
    • Select the required Image Category (Private Images, Marketplace Images, Other Images, or All).
      Click the Filter icon, if the screen is small and the Filtering option is not displayed by default.

    Offering Creation

    To create a service offering in CSA, first select an aggregate cloud offering and then provide the following details in the "Create an Offering" menu in CSA:

    1. In the Create an Offering menu, update the following details:
      • Which region do yo u want to use for this offering?
        Select the required region from the drop-down list. For example: US East (N. Virginia)
      • Which instance size do you want to use for this offering?
        Select the size to be used for the offering. For example: t2.small

    2. Based on the selection, the list of provider instances that will fulfill the created offering will be displayed.

      Note: Prices are subject to change without notice.

    3. Click Create Offering .

      An offering is created in CSA and the name of the offering is displayed with the message " Your offering is ready!".

      Click View offering link to get the metadata of the offering from Amazon (Display Name, Version, Description, Image, Selected Service Design) which needs to be uploaded in CSA.

      Click "Configue Another" to create another offering from same image, or click Return to Images" to return to list of images .

    Publishing offerings

    The created service offerings can be priced and published into suitable catalogs.

    These service catalogs allow the user to publish service offerings to the Marketplace Portal.

    Creating Properties for Cloud Brokering in CSA

    In CSA Provider menu, Create Resource Provider with credentials(Access key ID and Secret access key) for AWS.

    When Provider Type is Amazon AWS, click Learn More link (re-directing to Amazon website for info on Managing Access key ) to get information on how to configure an Access key ID and Secret access key, before adding amazon provider.
    Retain the Default Service Access point.

    For Microsoft Azure provider type, configure Compute Content in CSA and HCM to enable Cloud Service Brokering.

    For more information on Creating properties, see Provider properties

    In both Amazon and Azure auto create following properties:

    • Cloud Brokering Enabled (csbEnabled) boolean property: The default property value set is False.

    When csbEnabled is enabled, this resource provider will participate in the Cloud Brokering feature.
    Data syncronization from this resource provider will be made available in the Cloud Brokering area (Brokering menu) of CSA UI.

    • Optionally create (Excluded regions) string property to configure list of regions (comma separated) to exclude when synchronizing data from this resource provider.

    Example: us-east-1, us-east-2

    • Proxy Host string property
    • Proxy Password string property
    • Proxy Port string property
    • Proxy User string property
    • Resource Sync File Path (resourceSyncFilePath)string property: Configures the output path to store the resource provider data when the resource syncronization action is executed.
    Note: Operations Orchestration must be able to access this path.

    This path is automatically created and configured.

    This path points to standalone product installation path. For example: For CSA, this path is the location where CSA is installed.

    For Azure we need to create following properties in addition to the above:

    • Azure Subscription ID: The id is found under the billing section on the Azure Portal.

    • Azure Tenant ID: This information is on the Azure Portal.

When csb is enabled and the Resource Synchronization action is executed in the Provider Resource Pools, the data sync happens from AWS/Azure to Brokering menu in CSA. For more information on Resource Synchronization action, see Provider Resource Pools

 

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