AppLogic - Release 2.1

AppLogic 2.1 release includes many new key features which were not available in previous releases of the system:

• Application Monitoring
• SMP support
• GUI Enhancements
• System catalog update
• New reference applications
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Application Monitoring

The new application monitoring provides unprecedented visibility into the operation and performance of your applications. Every appliance within an application can be monitored simply by adding the new MON appliance to the application and connecting it to the other appliances before starting your application. Custom dashboards can then be created using the new monitoring GUI.

Hundreds of variables are available for inclusion in visual graphs that display the values of selected counters within the appliances and users can even define their own custom counters. The following counters are examples of what can be monitored for each appliance:

• Key statistics: CPU, memory, scheduler; total/used CPU, total/used/free memory, number of running processes
• Network statistics: Packets sent and received, total bytes sent and received
• Virtual volume statistics: total bytes read/written, completed read/write requests
• Appliance specific statistics:
• WEB: number of active requests, number of hits per second
• MYSQL: number of queries, number of connections

SMP support

AppLogic now supports SMP within virtual appliances as well as nodes with:

• SMP in appliances: Allows users to tune application performance by tailoring the resources for any given appliance from .01 CPU to 4 CPU, a 400X range
• SMP-style nodes: The following attributes are now supported in grid nodes:
• Dual CPUs, dual core for each CPU
• Large physical memory support (>2GB, 8GB has been tested)
• SMP Linux Appliances: Appliances can have more than 1 CPU and >2GB memory enabling them to take advantage of higher-end hardware
• Multiple hard disks

GUI Enhancements

AppLogic contains several new GUI enhancements:

• Web Shell: The AppLogic GUI now contains a web shell used for accessing the grid controller's command line interface
• Grid controller access: the main dashboard page contains a new "Shell login" button used for logging into the grid controller (also accessible through the application editor)
• Appliance access: right click on an appliance and click on the new "Login" menu item; this will log the user into the appliance (bash shell)
• Balloon connections: The AppLogic application editor now supports balloon connections.
• Make application diagrams less cluttered by allowing the user to connect terminals without drawing connection lines on the diagram.
• The new LAMP application offers an example of how balloon connections look on a diagram.

System catalog update

The System catalog now includes the following new/updated appliances:

• INSSL: HTTP gateway with SSL support providing a firewalled entry point for network traffic into an AppLogic application
• WEBx4 / WEBx8: Scalable web server appliances for heavy traffic loads
• MON: Monitor appliance used to collect counters from appliances within an application and displays them using visual graphs integrated into the AppLogic GUI
• WEB: Added a new net output terminal used for subnet access, added real IP logging plus other minor changes
• NAS: Added a new nfs input terminal used to access storage using the NFS/3.0 protocol

New reference applications

AppLogic contains the following new reference applications which make it easier to port your existing application onto:

• LAMP: Reference of a basic 2-tier WEB application, includes the following appliances:
• WEB for serving web content
• NET for subnet access from within WEB
• NAS for web content storage
• MYSQL for database storage
• INSSL to provide firewalled access to the web application
• MON for monitoring the application
• LAMPX4: A scalable LAMP application, uses 4 WEB servers with a load balancer (HLB) for heavy traffic load
• Clustered LAMP stack infrastructure - helps new users get a quick start by providing prepackaged, full-featured, scalable online application, complete with monitoring that can be scaled in production from a single CPU to more than 32 without modification.