As you purchase Cloud Applications service you need to create the environment with the required isolated containers. Cloud Applications, based on Jelastic PaaS, provides you with a powerful and intuitive user interface to create and configure environments up to your specific needs. Here is a short guide on how to customize your personal environment using Cloud Applications dashboard.
- Log in to your Cloud Applications dashboard and click the New Environment button in the upper-left corner
- Within the opened topology wizard dialog, set up all the necessary customizations. We recommend to perform adjustments starting from choosing the programming language or specialized deployment solution (Docker Engine or Kubernetes Cluster), then setting up topology by adding the required software stacks, configuring nodes, resources and specifics, reviewing the estimation of the environment and confirming its creation.
Choosing programming language or specific deployment option
As the first step of your environment creation, you need to select the deployment solution required for your project. The most common and recommended choice (unless you are pursuing a specific application/architecture) is certified containers. These stacks are specifically configured and managed by Cloud Applications (e.g. version updates, security patches). By default, they support all platform features (scaling, automated deployment, redeploy, SSL, etc.) for the most smooth and convenient hosting and development.
Click on the tab with the required programming language (Java, PHP, Ruby, .NET, Node.js, or Python) to proceed with Cloud Applications certified containers.
The other deployment options are available via the Docker tab. All the variants listed below utilize the basic Cloud Applications system container (so-called OS container), which makes them compatible with the most (but not all) of the platform-distinguishing features (e.g. vertical and horizontal scaling).
Configuring Topology
You can configure environment topology (layers structure) via the left part of the wizard. Here, the following blocks are available:
- Load Balancers: stacks that operate as an entry point for the environment to distribute incoming request and create even load on other nodes
- Application Servers (compute nodes): web servers that run your application
- Databases (SQL & NoSQL): database solutions to store and manage data
- Cache Node: a Memcached object caching system for speeding up web applications through alleviating database load
- Shared Storage: dedicated storage node with NFSv4 support, enlarged disk space and optimized performance
- Elastic VPS:virtual private servers on top of the CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, and Windows OS
- Build Node: a build automation tool for Java projects
- Extra (custom layers): any of the stacks mentioned above
A SSL protection can be configured for your environment via the same-named section.
Configuring Nodes Resources and Specifics
Once you are done with the topology structure, you can adjust each particular layer via the wizard’s central part. Here are the available options:
1. You can toggle a layer on/off, as well as provide a custom alias for it
2. Configure the automatic vertical scaling by setting the number of reserved and dynamic cloudlets (1 cloudlet = 128 MiB of RAM and 400 MHz of CPU) for the nodes within the layer. Think of it as a minimum and maximum CPU & RAM capacities per server. It is worth mentioning that no matter how high the scaling limit is, only actually consumed resources are charged. This helps to overcome load spikes and, at the same time, not to overpay for unused memory or processor.
3. The horizontal scaling part allows defining a number of nodes within the layer and choosing a preferred scaling mode (stateful or stateless).
4. Next, configure additional settings.
Reviewing and Confirming Environment Creation
Now you can review the amount of allocated resources and the estimated cost of the environment. The main resource measuring units in Cloud Applications are cloudlets. Here, you can see the number of reserved ones and the scaling limit (dynamic) for the whole environment.
Lastly, provide a name for your environment and click the Create to proceed.
Now, you are ready for application deployment and further use of your cloud environment.
