The Q-layer Delegation Manager is the first product based on Vmware ESX that transforms an operational datacenter in an agile cloud computing infrastructure. Offering data center resources in a cloud brings a whole new experience to the end user: services such as servers, storage, bandwidth and applications are now available on demand, resources are instantly available, users can scale their own environment to meet their requirements and the user is charged only for the resources they consume.

Cloud Computing out of the box

   

Q-layer Delegation Manager is a ready-to-go cloud computing solution that enables enterprise data center managers to smoothly upgrade their infrastructure to a cloud and offer virtual data center services to their end users. Delegation Manager runs on the NephOS Platform, Q-layer's data center abstraction and modeling platform. Using the NephOS extension capabilities and support for CloudApps, Delegation Manager comes with a pre-installed Virtual Private Data Center (VPDC) CloudApp.

The VPDC CloudApp contains a portal and control panels that enable end users to build, provision and manage their virtual private datacenter using drag and drop functionality. Adding a server becomes as easy as dragging the icon of the needed virtual appliance to the design canvas. The added resources are immediately available. Billing or chargeback is supported and is based on credits: the user is charged for what is used. 

The VPDC portal communicates with the underlying virtualized datacenter through the Data center Abstraction Layer (DAL), NephOS' abstraction framework. The DAL orchestrates and provisions all key infrastructure layers in the datacenter: physical and virtual servers, storage and networks. The DAL abstracts all components in each layer through a uniform set of actions (E.g. create machine, reboot, backup, restore, start, stop, etc). These actions are translated to the underlying physical or virtual technology. The same applies for actions on the network and storage layer.

Private Clouds

Cloud computing has been made popular by services such as Amazon EC2 and S3. Delegation Manager was designed as a cloud computing solution to be deployed as a private cloud: an internal platform in enterprise environments and delegate the management of virtual environments to end users. The product comes as a pre-installed image and requires little configuration, allowing for a quick start.  

Delegation Manager allows datacenter managers to give their end users control of their own virtual environments while keeping the TCO down: the complexity of managing a wide IT infrastructure is a major challenge for datacenter managers. With a multitude of servers, Linux and Windows environments, a choice of network topologies and fabrics, and SAN and NAS storage, the complexity can become overwhelming. Delegation Manager allows the datacenter manager to focus on the underlying infrastructure while putting the end user (partially) in control of his or her environment.

End user perspective

Delegation Manager was designed to be a user-friendly experience for the customer. As Delegation Manager uses the VPDC portal and workflows, end users benefit from very intuitive web and graphical interfaces, and a straightforward process to build and manage the VPDC. This process consists of 4 simple steps, starting with a new account right to having a complete, fully operational datacenter.

The first step for the end user is to acquire credits. Those credits are needed to deploy virtual resources. Once the necessary credits have been acquired, the customer can start building his or her virtual environment. For this purpose, the customer uses the VPDC web based drag&drop interface.

Building a virtual datacenter is as easy as dragging appliances from a list to the design canvas. Each time an appliance is added to the customer’s private environment, the applicable credits will be deducted from the available credits. Once the environment has been designed, the user can start configuring the virtual appliances using the control panels. Connecting appliances is as simple as drawing interconnect lines between the icons on the canvas. A click on the deploy button instantly provisions the environment.

Features & Benefits