WSO2 Cloud - New kid in town

WSO2 has been performing in the cloud for quite sometime now. StratosLive was its first public cloud offering which was operational from 2010 Q4 to 2014 Q2. We had to shutdown StratosLive after we donated Stratos code to Apache (due to trademarks etc.). Now Apache Stratos is a top level project (graduated) after spending nearly one year in incubating.

We at WSO2 were feeling the requirement of a cloud which is more user friendly and more use case oriented. To be honest, although StratosLive had all WSO2 middleware products hosted in the cloud, a user needed to put some effort to get a use case completed using it. It was decided to build a new application cloud (app cloud) and an API cloud using the WSO2 middleware stack. App Cloud was going to be powered by WSO2 AppFactory and API Cloud by WSO2 API Manager. The complete solution was decided to be named as "WSO2 Cloud".

We hosted a preview version of WSO2 Cloud as WSO2 CloudPreview in October 2013. Since then we were working on identifying bugs, usability and stability issues, etc. and fixing them. This June, we announced WSO2 Cloud beta. It was announced in WSO2 Con - Europe 2014 in Barcelona.

WSO2 Cloud - https://cloud.wso2.com

You can go to WSO2 Cloud via the above link. If you have an account in wso2.com (aka WSO2 Oxygen Tank) you do not need to register, you can sign in with that account. If you don't, you can register by simply providing your email address.

Once you are signed in, you will be presented with the two clouds, App Cloud and API Cloud.

   

WSO2 App Cloud

• Create applications from scratch - JSP, Jaggery, JAX-WS, JAX-RS
• Upload existing web applications - JSP, Jaggery
• Database provisioning for your apps
• Life cycle management for your app - Dev, Test and Prod environments
• Team work - A team can collaboratively work on the app
• Issue tracking tool
• A Git repository per each application and a build tool.
• Cloud IDE - For your app development work
•  And more...

WSO2 API Cloud

• Create APIs and publish to API store (a store per tenant)
• Subscribe to APIs in the API store
• Tier management
• Throttling
• Statistics
• Documentations for APIs

Above mentioned are some of the major features of WSO2 App Cloud and API Cloud. I'll be writing more posts targeting specific features and hope to bring some screen casts for you.

Experience WSO2 Cloud and let us know your feedback..

Fronting your Stratos service with the WSO2 LoadBalancer

Today I wanted to front the StratosLive Manager with the WSO2 LoadBalancer. I didn't have an idea on how to do it. Then with Afkham Azeez's instructions, I was able to do it. I thought of recording the steps for my and others future use. Following instructions will guide you to front any stratos service with a loadbalancer.

First you need to have the WSO2 LoadBalancer and the service (in this case WSO2 Stratos Manager).

Changes to be done in LoadBalancer
Find the loadbalancer.xml in the repository/conf folder.
Add the following lines under services tag.

    

       cloud-test.wso2.com

    

    wso2.manager.domain

This host name is important because it is going to be added to the axis2.xml of Manager.

Add the above host name to /etc/hosts file.

Changes to axis2.xml of Manager
First enable clustering .

Then set membership scheme to well known addressing - wka

wka

Then set the domain as wso2.manager.domain. This is the host name added in the loadbalancer.xml.

wso2.manager.domain

Change the local member port to some random value, say 5000.

5000

After setting the above parameters, start the LoadBalancer. Then start the Manager. When the manager joins the cluster, you will see a log similar to the following in the LoadBalancer log.

[2011-09-01 23:55:55,919]  INFO - RpcMembershipRequestHandler Received JOIN message from 192.168.1.2:5000(wso2.manager.domain)

[2011-09-01 23:55:55,921]  INFO - MembershipManager Application member 192.168.1.2:5000(wso2.manager.domain) joined group wso2.manager.domain

[2011-09-01 23:56:06,935]  INFO - DefaultGroupManagementAgent Application member Host:192.168.1.2, Port: 5000, HTTP:9763, HTTPS:9443, ACTIVE:true joined application cluster

Now you can try to access Manager's management console via the following url https://cloud-test.wso2.com:8243/

Note that Manager is running on 9443. But we specify the port as 8243 because it is the port LoadBalancer is running. Then, the above request first goes to the LoadBalancer and then to the Manager. When you enter the above url in the browser, you can see this by monitoring the two logs of LoadBalancer and Manager.

NOTE: This is the most simplest scenario fronting a service with the load balancer.

Billing the cloud - StratosLive invoice - What does it contain?

StratosLive is a complete Open PaaS from WSO2. It comes up with its own billing component to bill the tenants for using the cloud. If you have tried out StratosLive, you must have received a monthly invoice for using it. Although you receive an invoice it does not means StratosLive charges for everything. If you want you can sign up for a Demo account which is free or else you can sign up for a paid account with more privileges to consume resources.

StratosLive's billing is based on two parameters.

1.Subscription of the tenant – When you sign up to use StratosLive you can select a usage plan. You can change this usage plan whenever needed. There is a monthly subscription fee associated with the plans.

2.Resource usage – When you select a usage plan, there is a set of resources which can be used under that plan. If you happen to consume resources more than the amount allowed, the excess usage will be charged.

Invoice is generated on the last day of the month and you are notified via email once it is available. Shown below is a sample invoice and I'll describe what is included in it. You can view the invoice in StratosLive Manager's Home → Billing & Metering → Past Invoices.

Following information is available in the invoice.

A) Invoice number

B) Invoice period (i.e. for which time period does this invoice applicable) and Invoice date – date which the invoice was generated

C) Subscription fees for the subscriptions you have used during the period. For example if you have sticked to the same subscription there will be one entry for this. But in this sample invoice, the user has used a SMB usage plan for 5 days and then has changed it to a Demo usage plan. Therefore there are two entries for subscription fee section. It is important to notice that the subscription fee is calculated only for the number of days which you were subscribed in to it.

D) Over usage charges – At the time of bill generation, users usage data is retrieved by the billing engine and compares it with the allowed usage limits for the active subscription at that time. If the user has exceeded the allowed limit, excess usage is charged. Charging the excess usage depends on the desire of the cloud owner. For example, in the above invoice, the tenant has consumed 32MB of excess storage. But it is not being charged. Over use charges are calculated for Bandwidth and Storage. Invoice clearly mentions how much is charged for each of them.

E) Payment details within the period – If you did a payment for your previous invoice, it should clearly be mentioned in this invoice. You can see it in the sample invoice too.

F) Finally, there is a summary which includes the Brought Forward value, Total cost for this period, Total payments during this period and the Carried forward value.

G) After all those details, you get the Paypal button to pay the invoice securely.

Interim Invoice

You will not find this facility in many billing systems. But StratosLive provides you to view your cost for using it up to this moment. Interim invoice shows your costs from the last invoice date to this moment. Many cloud services only provides you the monthly invoice at the end of the month. But we provide you the invoice on demand.

If you have been charged for over using resources, you can check whether the excess usage amounts mentioned in the invoice are accurate by going through you usage report for the month. Usage report can be found at Home →Billing & Metering →Usage Report

Metering, Throttling and Billing in cloud

Usage metering is a very important area when it comes to cloud computing. No matter whether it is a public or a private cloud, PaaS provider will be interested in metering the resources consumed by tenants. Accurate metering leads to successful throttling and billing.

WSO2 StratosLive is a public cloud deployment. There needs to be a way of measuring how tenants consume cloud resources. It is necessary to measure them to control or facilitate the tenants consuming resources. StratosLive encourages tenants to make full use of it's resources. But there needs to be a control mechanism too. Billing, Metering and Throttling components are responsible for measuring resource usage, charging the tenants and controlling access to resources in StratosLive.

What is Metering, Throttling and Billing?

Metering is the base for Billing and Throttling. It measures bandwidth and storage consumed by tenants. Throttling runs its throttling rules against the metered data and takes decisions on access controlling to resources. This resources are, webapps, services, registry storage and registry items. Billing, if enabled (which is enabled in StratosLive), charges customers based on the metered data in a monthly basis. Billing considers not only the metered data, but also the usage plan which the tenant is subscribed and the pricing strategy.

Metering

What are being metered?

In StratosLive following are being metered tenant-wise.

• Webapp bandwidth – When a request is coming to a webapp hosted by a tenant and a response is sent, the amount of bandwidth consumed is metered.

• Service bandwidth – When a service hosted by a tenant is invoked and a response is received, the amount of bandwidth consumed is metered.

• Registry bandwidth – When registry resources are accessed (get/put), the amount of bandwidth consumed is metered.

• Registry storage – When artifacts are added to the registry, the amount of consumed registry storage is metered.

How they are being metered?

Webapp and service bandwidths are measured via Tomcat valves(add a link here). When the request is going through the valve, bandwidth is measured. Registry bandwidth and registry storage is measured when artifacts put/get into/from the registry.

StratosLive services (i.e. Enterprise Service Bus, Application Server) measures the above data and sends them to the Business Activity Monitor to be stored. These metered data are then summarized periodically making them available for billing and throttling components.

What data is available for tenants?

Tenants can view their monthly usage report in StratosLive Manager under the following menu.

Home → Billing & Metering → Usage Report

Shown below is a screen shot of a usage report

Throttling

Throttling component is scheduled to run throttling rules periodically and update permission of tenants on accessing/consuming various resources and stores them in the registry. There are throttling agents in each and every service. When a tenant is trying to access a webapp/service/registry item, throttling agent looks for the permission for the relevant action and decides whether to allow or discard the request. One great advantage of the throttling in StratosLive is throttling rules can be updated on the fly. StratosLive Manager provides this facility only to the super-tenant (i.e. the administrator of StratosLive). This means, if you have a private cloud setup, you have total control over throttling. Once the rules are updated via the StratosLive Manager UI, next run of the rules will be using the updated rules.


Billing

Billing (bill generation) is done on a monthly basis. Bill generation is scheduled on the last day of each month. This date can be configured as you wish. When the bill generation is completed, customers (tenants) are informed via email. They can view their invoice in StratosLive Manager Home → Billing & Metering → Past Invoices. Customers can also view their interim invoice too. Interim invoice is the invoice for the time period from last invoice to this moment. This is generated on demand and can be viewed in StratosLive Manager Home → Billing & Metering → Interim Invoice. Shown below is a sample invoice of a tenant.


Where does Billing, Metering & Throttling takes place in StratosLive?

StratosLive user base is growing day-by-day. Therefore, metering, throttling and billing operations can be very heavy. StratosLive deployment architecture makes sure that this does not affect the smooth functioning of any other services. It is done by keeping a dedicated instance for these three heavy tasks. This instance is called the Summarizer.

StratosLive - The most complete open PaaS from WSO2

StratosLive is the new, complete, open PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) from WSO2. It is powered by WSO2 Stratos which is a cloud middleware platform. WSO2 Stratos shares a common code base with WSO2 Carbon which is a middleware platform.

StratosLive was released on 18th of July 2011(Before that WSO2 had the Stratos beta which reached its EOL with the release of StratosLive). It is a public cloud deployment where you can create your account(tenant) and try it yourself. An important fact about StratosLive is you can try it for free. All you have to do is create an account with a "Demo" usage plan (Demo is for free). If you are interested and if you wanna make use of StratosLive more, you can upgrade your account to be eligible to use more resources such as bandwidth and storage capacity. You can select from SMB, Professional and Enterprise plans. More info about StratosLive usage plans can be found from Pricing Info

If you are familiar with WSO2 Carbon platform or if you want to try out WSO2 Carbon platform, StratosLive gives you that opportunity. Other than the features you find in WSO2 Carbon products, following are some of the new features you can find in StratosLive.

• Tenant-specific logging - You can view logs related to your tenants activities
• Monthly invoice and payment via Paypal - You will receive an invoice at the end of the month for using StratosLive. Dont worry, if you are using the Demo plan, you will not be charged a cent. If you are subscribed to other plans such as SMB, Professional or Enterprise, you will get an invoice. StratosLive allows you to pay the invoice via Paypal securely.
• Usage meter - You can view your usage amounts of StratosLive.
• You can login to StratosLive using your Google Apps account

Most importantly, StratosLive is a multi-tenant environament (yes, it is tenant aware).
So, go to Stratoslive, try it for free, if you are inspired (I'm sure you will), use it in your production :)

I will blog more about StratosLive soon.