Novell PLATESPIN ORCHESTRATE Administrator Reference

Novell®

www.novell.com

Administrator Reference

PlateSpin® Orchestrate

novdocx (en) 13 May 2009

AUTHORIZED DOCUMENTATION

2.0.2

June 17, 2009

PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 Administrator Reference

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4 PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 Administrator Reference

Contents

About This Guide 7

1 Basic PlateSpin Orchestrate Concepts 9

1.1 Understanding PlateSpin Orchestrate Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

1.1.1 The PlateSpin Orchestrate Agent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

1.1.2 The Resource Monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

1.1.3 Entity Types and Managers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

1.1.4 Jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

1.1.5 Constraint-Based Job Scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

1.1.6 Understanding PlateSpin Orchestrate API Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

1.2 Understanding PlateSpin Orchestrate Functionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

1.2.1 Resource Virtualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

1.2.2 Policy-Based Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

1.2.3 Grid Object Visualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

1.2.4 Understanding Job Semantics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

1.2.5 Distributed Messaging and Failover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

1.2.6 Web-Based User Interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

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A PlateSpin Orchestrate Security 27

A.1 User and Administrator Password Hashing Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

A.2 User and Agent Password Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

A.3 Password Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

A.4 TLS Encryption. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

A.5 Security for Administrative Services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

A.6 Plain Text Visibility of Sensitive Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

B Server Discovery and Multicasting 31

B.1 Multicast Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

B.2 Multicast Routes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

B.3 Multi-homed Hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

B.4 Multiple Subnets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

B.5 Datagrid and Multicasting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

B.6 Datagrid Multicast Interface Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Contents 5

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6 PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 Administrator Reference

About This Guide

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This Administration Guide introduces the processes you can use with PlateSpin® Orchestrate 2.0
from Novell
various command line tools. The guide provides an introductory overview of PlateSpin Orchestrate
and explains how it administers and manages work on the resources of the data center. The guide is
organized as follows:

 Chapter 1, “Basic PlateSpin Orchestrate Concepts,” on page 9

 Appendix A, “PlateSpin Orchestrate Security,” on page 27

 Appendix B, “Server Discovery and Multicasting,” on page 31

For reference information about the Orchestrate Server or the Orchestrate Development Client, see
the PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 Development Client Reference. For information about the Orchestrate
Command Line Tools, see PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 Command Line Reference.

Audience

This book is intended for data center managers and IT or Operations administrators. It assumes that
users of the product have the following background:

 General understanding of network operating environments and systems architecture.

 Knowledge of basic UNIX* shell commands and text editors.

Feedback

®

, including the applied use of the PlateSpin Orchestrate Development Client and

We want to hear your comments and suggestions about this manual and the other documentation
included with this product. Please use the User Comments feature at the bottom of each page of the
online documentation, or go to www.novell.com/documentation/feedback.html (http://

www.novell.com/documentation/feedback.html) and enter your comments there.

Documentation Updates

For the most recent version of this Administration Guide, visit the PlateSpin Orchestrate Web site

(http://www.novell.com/documentation/pso_orchestrate20/).

Documentation Conventions

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items in a cross-reference path.

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forward slash, such as Linux* or UNIX, should use forward slashes as required by your software.

, TM, etc.) denotes a Novell trademark. An asterisk (*) denotes a third-party

About This Guide 7

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8 PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 Administrator Reference

1

Basic PlateSpin Orchestrate

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Concepts

This section contains the followings information:

 Section 1.1, “Understanding PlateSpin Orchestrate Architecture,” on page 9

 Section 1.2, “Understanding PlateSpin Orchestrate Functionality,” on page 20

1.1 Understanding PlateSpin Orchestrate Architecture

PlateSpin Orchestrate from Novell is an advanced datacenter management solution designed to
manage all network resources. It provides the infrastructure that manages group of ten, one hundred,
or thousands of physical or virtual resources.

PlateSpin Orchestrate is equally apt at performing a number of distributed processing problems.
From high performance computing, the breaking down of work into lots of small chunks that can be
processed in parallel through distributed job scheduling. The following figure shows the product’s
high-level architecture:

Figure 1-1 PlateSpin Orchestrate Architecture

1

Basic PlateSpin Orchestrate Concepts

9

This section contains information about the following topics:

 Section 1.1.1, “The PlateSpin Orchestrate Agent,” on page 10

 Section 1.1.2, “The Resource Monitor,” on page 11

 Section 1.1.3, “Entity Types and Managers,” on page 11

 Section 1.1.4, “Jobs,” on page 14

 Section 1.1.5, “Constraint-Based Job Scheduling,” on page 17

 Section 1.1.6, “Understanding PlateSpin Orchestrate API Interfaces,” on page 18

1.1.1 The PlateSpin Orchestrate Agent

Agents are installed on all managed resources as part of the product deployment. The agent connects
every managed resource to its configured server and advertises to the PlateSpin Orchestrate Server
that the resource is available for tasks. This persistent and auto-reestablishing connection is
important because it provides a message bus for the distribution of work, collection of information
about the resource, per-job messaging, health checks, and resource failover control.

After resources are enabled, PlateSpin Orchestrate can discover, access, and store detailed
abstracted information—called “facts”—about every resource. Managed resources, referred to as
“nodes,” are addressable members of the Orchestrate Server “grid” (also sometimes called the
“matrix”). When integrated into the grid, nodes can be deployed, monitored, and managed by the
Orchestrate Server, as discussed in Section 1.2, “Understanding PlateSpin Orchestrate

Functionality,” on page 20.

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An overview of the PlateSpin Orchestrate grid architecture is illustrated in the figure below, much of
which is explained in this guide:

10 PlateSpin Orchestrate 2.0 Administrator Reference