1 Introduction

Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center provides APIs and a Command Line Interface (CLI) to enable the access to a subset of the virtual datacenter(vDC) functionality provided to cloud users.

These APIs and CLI offer a way to cloud users to programmatically manage allocated virtual resources in a vDC account, providing the ability to create and manage vServers to deploy applications in an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) mode.This guide provides information about:

Cloud Infrastructure API – A programatic Web service interface for managing virtual datacenter (vDC) resources allocated in vDC accounts.
Cloud Infrastructure Client Java API – A Java client API for interacting with the Web services interface.
Cloud Infrastructure CLI – A Java-based CLI that wraps the Cloud Infrastructure Java API with simple scripts.

The following topics are covered in this chapter:

vDC Management Overview
How APIs and CLI Work
Functionality Overview

vDC Management Overview

Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center supports cloud management functions through its vDC Management system in three different aspects:

vDC infrastructure administration - Area related to the management and allocation of physical resources for the vDC by a cloud administrator. The managed resources are the server pools, storage, and networks.
Cloud users management - Area related to the management of the cloud users, their linkage with the authentication systems, and their association with the vDC accounts that they are authorized to access by a cloud administrator.
vDC resources utilization - Area related to cloud user tasks to perform lifecycle management of vServers and resources in a vDC account. There might be more than one cloud user associated with an account with the same level of privileges and access control.

See Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Feature Reference Guide for more information about vDC management.

Important Concepts

The following list describes vDC management related concepts used in this guide:

Virtual Datacenter - Consolidation of virtualization servers, storage, and network resources to be utilized optimally and securely for mixed and dynamic workloads.
Account - An account entitles designated cloud users the right to use computing, network, and storage resources of vDC. The account provides the required capabilities to manage these resources. The amount of vCPU, memory and storage resources that can be used from the available vDC resources.
Cloud Administrator - An Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center user with the cloud administrator role. Cloud administrator can create and manage the vDCs, accounts, and cloud users.
Cloud User - An Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center user with the cloud user role. Cloud users can have access to different accounts to manage the allocated resources. Cloud users can create virtual servers to host or access applications.

How APIs and CLI Work

For this release, cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI supports the management of the resources in vDC accounts using the following virtualization technologies:

Oracle Solaris Zones
Oracle VM Server for x86

Figure 1-1 illustrates the execution flow and components that support the Cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI.

Figure 1-1 Cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI Execution Flow

Description of "Figure 1-1 Cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI Execution Flow"

The Cloud Infrastructure CLI is delivered as a standalone package and can be used without the need of an Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center installation in the computer where the CLI is deployed. This element offers the same functionality as the Cloud Infrastructure API and Java Client API.
The Cloud Infrastructure Java Client API provides for the Cloud Infrastructure CLI a common set of functionality for executing actions through the Cloud Infrastructure API. The Java Client API is also delivered as a standalone package.
Cloud Infrastructure API is a Web service that exposes a subset of the functionality of the virtual datacenter management system. A Cloud Infrastructure API request triggers an action by calling the corresponding action of the virtual center management system.

The functionality exposed by the Web service can then be accessed programmatically using the Java Client API, the CLI, or by making calls directly to the Web service.

Synchronous Semantic

The Cloud Infrastructure API provides a synchronous call semantic for all modify or create actions. On return, the caller gets at least the identifiers of the changed or created resources.

The creation of the resource IDs and the mapping to jobs are handled by the vDC management system. The Cloud Infrastructure API must wait actively for notifications from Job Manager to get the IDs of the changed or created resources. Jobs are tailored in a special way to deliver fast results, the Cloud Infrastructure API waits only until the necessary results are available.

The Cloud Infrastructure API returns a valid identifier, but the resource might have failed to be created. A cloud user must be able to view the resource information, such as name, description, and status using the identifier returned, see also Status of Account Resources.

Functionality Overview

The virtual datacenter management system in Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center has a set of functions that are also reached by the Cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI. Table 1-1 to Table 1-11 show a comparison between the functions provided by the virtual datacenter system and, the Cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI.

Table 1-1 vDC Management

Functionality	Virtual Datacenter Management	Cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI
Create, update, and delete vDC	Yes	No
View vDC details	Yes	Yes

Table 1-2 Account Management

Functionality	Virtual Datacenter Management	Cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI
Create, update, and delete account	Yes	No
View account details	Yes	No
Associate or disassociate cloud user with account	Yes	No

Table 1-3 Template Management

Functionality	Virtual Datacenter Management	Cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI
Upload, update, and delete server template	Yes	Yes

Table 1-4 vServer Management

Functionality	Virtual Datacenter Management	Cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI
Create, update, and delete vServer	Yes	Yes
Stop, start, and reboot vServer	Yes	Yes
View vServer attributes	Yes	Yes
Suspend and resume vServer	Yes	No
Shut down all vServers	Yes	No
Send and receive message from vServer	No	Yes

Table 1-5 Volume Management

Functionality	Virtual Datacenter Management	Cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI
Create, update, and delete volume	Yes	Yes
Attach and detach volume to vServer	Yes	Yes
Create volume from snapshot	Yes	Yes
Import volume	Yes	Yes

Table 1-6 Snapshot Management

Functionality	Virtual Datacenter Management	Cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI
Create, update, and delete snapshot	Yes	Yes

Table 1-7 Virtual IP Management

Functionality	Virtual Datacenter Management	Cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI
Allocate and deallocate IP Address	Yes	Yes

Table 1-8 Virtual Network Management

Functionality	Virtual Datacenter Management	Cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI
Create, update, and delete private virtual network	Yes	Yes

Table 1-9 Account and vServer Access Management

Functionality	Virtual Datacenter Management	Cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI
Create, import, and delete key pair	Yes	Yes
Create, delete, and access key	Yes	Yes

Table 1-10 Distribution Groups Management

Functionality	Virtual Datacenter Management	Cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI
Create and delete distribution groups	Yes	Yes

Table 1-11 Tag Management

Functionality	Virtual Datacenter Management	Cloud Infrastructure APIs and CLI
Create and delete tags	Yes	Yes