Heads in the cloud

Today’s Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator Deep Dive focuses on Jade APIs that provide the entire Business Logic layer for our cloud management software. Jade is the top level management structure in the software stack. Jade contains and manages the following elements:

• APIs
• Customer Management
• Product & Product Offer Management
• Metering & Billing Capabilities
• Job System

Jade talks to the Cluster Coordinator (Tigerlily) to then control each individual cluster of resources.

Jade provides three APIs:

1. A user API, used by end users for manipulating virtual resources on the platform (available by REST and SOAP)

Jade’s user API allows end users of the platform to manipulate their own virtual resources. Authentication is by user and customer, meaning that a user who is so permitted can manipulate resources of different customers using the appropriate authentication credentials.

Administrators can use the user API, authenticating as the administrator but passing the UsernameToken SOAP header (SOAP) or X-AssumeToken HTTP header (REST) set to the authentication username (the login username, a slash, and the customer UUID) of the customer concerned; see Authenticating to the APIs for more details.

2. An admin API used by administrators for various administrative functions (available by REST and SOAP)

Jade’s admin API provides a means for users with administrative access to perform administrative functions on the platform. Users with administrative access are:

• Master Billing Entity administrators (administrators of the licensee who can administer all billing entities)
• Other Billing Entity administrators (administrators of other billing entities, for instance resellers, who can only administer the Billing Entity to which they belong)

Jade provides an interface to allow authenticated administrators to perform administrative functions only within the Billing Entities they are authorized to use. For instance, they can:

• List, search for, create, delete, or modify customers or users;
• List transactions performed by a particular customer, or perform those transactions on the customer’s behalf; and
• Create, modify or delete Product Offers within the system.

Jade’s admin API does not permit administrators to manipulate the virtual resources of customers directly. In order to manipulate customer resources, administrators should use the User API, authenticating as the administrator but passing the UsernameToken SOAP header (SOAP) or X-AssumeToken HTTP header (REST) set to the authentication username (the login username, a slash, and the customer UUID) of the customer concerned. For more details see Authenticating to the APIs.

3. An open API, available unauthenticated for retrieving objects prior to authentication (available by REST only).

Jade’s open API provides a means for unauthenticated users to retrieve in a read-only manner certain resources without authentication. For instance, to allow the sign-on screen in Skyline to retrieve login graphics, blobs are retrieved which are marked as public.

Getting Started

You can read more about the Key Jade Concepts available, and see also Authenticating to the APIs. To get started with Flexiant Cloud Orchestrator, get in touch now.