The What/Why/How about AppLogic
What is AppLogic?
Why do I want to run on a grid?
How do my applications run?
How do I manage all this?
How does AppLogic Work?
Is AppLogic for me?
When to use AppLogic?
What is AppLogic?
AppLogic is a grid operating system – it turns an array of standard servers with directly attached storage into a scalable computing resource you can use to run and scale web services. The intuitive browser-based AppLogic user interface makes your grid easy to manage.
By using AppLogic, CariNet can focus on what we do best, build and operate datacenters, while allowing you complete control of the environment to run your applications.
To be correct AppLogic is a meta-operating system. That means it incorporates other operating systems within it and allows you to use your existing software unmodified.
AppLogic does not require a SAN or other expensive hardware, and is open and vendor-neutral. It supports Linux and all popular open-source middleware including Apache, MySQL, JBoss and Ruby on Rails.
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Why do I want to run on a grid?
With AppLogic it is easy to scale and manage the infrastructure for your applications. Because AppLogic runs on a grid of standard commodity servers, you can:
- Deploy existing web applications on the grid without changing any code
- Run multiple different web applications on the same server
- Scale each application from a fraction of a server up to the whole grid
- Manage whole racks of servers easier than a single server today
- Handle hardware failures automatically without losing data
- Add or remove servers and storage without disrupting applications
- Manage all applications, servers and storage with just a browser
AppLogic does not require a SAN or other expensive hardware, and is open and vendor-neutral. It supports Linux and all popular open-source middleware including Apache, MySQL, JBoss and Ruby on Rails, so there is no learning curve to slow down your team.
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How do my applications run?
Running your applications on AppLogic is actually far simpler than using traditional hardware, because there’s never any hardware to deploy, configure or maintain. When you run an application on the AppLogic grid, it manufactures all infrastructure pieces needed for it on demand, assembles and configures them and runs your code on top. When you stop the application, AppLogic tears down the infrastructure.
This makes an enormous difference on what you can do with your application. To start with, you no longer need to own special hardware: the application is completely self-contained and will run on any grid of commodity servers. Without the tie-in to hardware, all you need to assemble and manage applications is a browser, so you can do it from anywhere in the world.
Plus, when you need additional performance, it takes just minutes to increase the resources allocated to your application. You can add more servers as needed, forget about over-provisioning.
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How do I manage all this?
With AppLogic, all servers, storage, applications and users are managed from a single, browser-based management console. AppLogic also comes with a scriptable command-line interface that makes it easy to provision applications and scale them on the fly with a script.
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How does AppLogic Work?
AppLogic replaces infrastructure hardware such as firewalls, load balancers, network attached storage (NAS), storage area networks (SAN) and others with disposable infrastructure components that are implemented entirely in software and run on the grid as an integral part of each application. The technology that enables this is called disposable infrastructure. It allows to package existing operating systems and middleware into disposable components that are easy to configure, assemble and include with your application. Rather than installing software on servers, applications on AppLogic are assembled from virtual appliances. Each appliance is a completely virtualized runtime environment and software stack.
For example, with AppLogic you can build a database appliance by combining your favorite Linux distro and database engine. The resulting appliance is easy to instantiate, configure and assemble with other such appliances wherever a database is needed. This way, N-tier applications become hardware-independent, which makes them easy to deploy and scale.
Instead of assembling hardware and then spending weeks cobbling together all the software to make it work, with AppLogic you simply open a browser and use the friendly graphical user interface to take a firewall, load balancer, web server and any other component, drag them on screen and connect. Then you add the HTML files, code, database and content specific for your application. Now with a single hit of a button you can produce a portable executable image of your entire application that includes all of the above and runs on any grid.
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Is AppLogic for me?
- If you are a Web 2.0 company, AppLogic enables you to scale to hundreds of thousands of users without spending effort and money on IT infrastructure. With AppLogic, you can scale your application incrementally from a single server to hundreds of servers without owning hardware.
- If you are a software company looking to offer existing application as a SaaS online service, AppLogic makes it possible to deploy the service in under a month, avoid the risk and expense of re-engineering the application, and scale it to hundreds of servers incrementally as demand develops.
- If you are an open source developer looking for a better way to monetize a popular application, AppLogic makes it easy to gain access to millions of new users who don’t use open source today simply because they lack the skills, the time or the desire to set it up and manage it. Top of Page
When to use AppLogic?
Deploy applications on standard infrastructure
If you’re developing software and don’t enjoy configuring servers and infrastructure, AppLogic makes it easy to deploy scalable web applications without dedicated IT personnel. Pick a standard infrastructure component from the catalog, copy your HTML files, scripts code and database onto the logical volumes and start your application.Develop new web applications
AppLogic saves you time and aggravation when building and testing your application with the exact middleware and system configuration it’ll have in production. Simply copy and start one of the standard infrastructure applications that come with AppLogic and in minutes, you’ll have a private N-tier application setup and running. Run it in “sandbox” mode to fit even large application on a single server during test, or use a larger grid to test your code under real-world loads at any time.Build custom N-tier application infrastructure
AppLogic is the ultimate tool for designing, building and replicating complex distributed infrastructures. With the visual infrastructure editor and catalog of virtual appliances, you can assemble, configure and troubleshoot your system visually. Integrations that took weeks can be done in hours. What’s more, AppLogic makes it easy to pre-assemble frequently used subsystems, such as clustered databases, web tiers, application server clusters, and many others, and reuse these assemblies in many applications, or in several places within the same application.Test and tune N-tier applications
Achieve easy multi-tenant deployment
AppLogic’s monitoring system makes it easy to visualize what’s happening in your application under load, so troubleshooting and performance tuning are easier than ever before. You can also save a “known good” state of the application for rollback and literally check your application into a version control system to have complete visibility into all changes made to its infrastructure, configuration or code.
AppLogic enables multi-tenant deployment of existing web applications without expensive re-engineering. Simply run multiple instances of the application on the same grid and scale each individual instance as required, from a fraction of a server up to dozens of servers. As a result, most applications can be deployed as online services within a week or two avoiding the complex task of building and running a single huge multi-tenant application.Watch the demo to see how cloud computing can change your business. (.swf)