About Target Support

Roboconf can deploy an application on various targets.
This includes cloud infrastructures (IaaS) or other kinds of targets.
It can even deploy a part of an application on a given IaaS and some other parts on other IaaS. This makes Roboconf suitable for hybrid deployments. Thus, you can deploy applications in the cloud, in your (self-hosted) information system or even on embedded systems (connected devices, internet of things…).

The support of deployment target support is for the moment fairly basic.
Roboconf only creates compute VMs. It is planned to extend this support to storage and other IaaS features (such as routing, etc).

For every target, the definition follows the same schema. In the graph model, root components are associated with hardware elements. This can be virtual machines (VMs), existing machines or devices. These root components should be associated with the target installer.

When Roboconf will parse the model, it will know recognize this installer and then search for the IaaS configuration.
It means the resources directory associated with this root component must contain a target.properties file.

graph
├── your-graph-model.graph
├── ...
└── "root component" directory
    └── target.properties

The deployment manager will analyze the properties and deduce which target handler pick up.
It will then pick up the right client library to create the VM. Most of the target implementations of Roboconf rely on virtual images (or AMI or appliance). It means Roboconf creates a virtual machine from a template and properties given in the IaaS properties.

Multi-IaaS (for hybrid cloud) is handled by defining several root components.
Each one will be associated with various IaaS properties. Thus, to deploy a component X on an Open Stack VM or an AWS VM, you will have the following graph definition.

VM_AWS {
	children: X;
	installer: target;
}

VM_Open_Stack {
	children: X;
	installer: target;
}

X {
	# whatever
}

And the resources directories.

graph/
├── your-graph-model.graph
├── ...
├── VM_Open_Stack/
|   └── target.properties
└── VM_AWS/
	└── target.properties

Where will be instantiated the x component will depend on the definition of initial instances and of the administrator actions. This graph indicates the component X can be instantiated over a VM created into Amazon Web Services or into Open Stack. The same mechanism is used to deploy a part of an application into the cloud and some other parts onto devices or internal systems.