Introduction

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The following sections provide an overview of Aliyun and the Alibaba Cloud: Aliyun PowerPack:

What Does the Alibaba Cloud: Aliyun PowerPack Monitor?

Aliyun, also known as AliCloud, is Alibaba's cloud computing service platform. To monitor Aliyun cloud services using SL1, you must install the Alibaba Cloud: Aliyun PowerPack. This PowerPack enables you to discover, model, and collect data about Aliyun cloud resources.

The Alibaba Cloud: Aliyun PowerPack includes:

  • An example credential you can use to create SOAP/XML credentials to connect to the Aliyun service
  • Dynamic Applications to discover and monitor Aliyun cloud resources
  • Device Classes for each type of Aliyun component device monitored by SL1

The Dynamic Applications in the Alibaba Cloud: Aliyun PowerPack can monitor performance metrics and/or collect configuration data for the following Aliyun services and components:

  • CloudDisk
  • Elastic Compute Service (ECS)

What are Aliyun Regions and Zones?

An Aliyun region is an individual data center located in a specific geographic locale. Regions have a canonical naming scheme of:

[country/continent] [direction] [number]

For example, the "US East 1" region is located in the United States, on the East Coast, and it is the #1 data center in that region.

Aliyun regions are also commonly referred to by the city, state, or country in which the data center is located. For example, "China North 2" is commonly referred to as "Beijing", "Asia Pacific SE 2" is commonly referred to as "Sydney", etc.

The Dynamic Applications in the Alibaba Cloud: Aliyun PowerPack create a "region" component device for each discovered region. The component devices for regions include both the region name and city/state description.

All instances of an Aliyun service within a specific region then reside in one or more zones. A zone is an independent infrastructure set within a regional data center. Some regions have multiple zones, while others have only a single zone.

The Aliyun naming convention for a zone is:

region[a-z]

For example, zone "a" for the region "us-east-1" is named "us-east-1a".

The Dynamic Applications in the Alibaba Cloud: Aliyun PowerPack create a "zone" component device for each discovered zone.

Component devices that represent Aliyun services reside under the appropriate "region" and "zone" component devices.

Dynamic Applications: Naming Scheme and Roles

The Dynamic Applications in the Alibaba Cloud: Aliyun PowerPack include three types:

  • Discovery. These Dynamic Applications poll Aliyun for new instances of services or changes to existing instances of services.
  • Configuration. These Dynamic Applications retrieve configuration information about each service instance and retrieve any changes to that configuration information.
  • Performance. These Dynamic Applications poll Aliyun for performance metrics.

Discovery Dynamic Applications are responsible for searching the Aliyun cloud for instances of specific services. Typically, a Discovery Dynamic Application will then align Performance Dynamic Applications and Configuration Dynamic Applications for each discovered service instance.

The general Dynamic Application hierarchy is:

  • Account Configuration
    • Region Discovery
      • Zone Discovery
        • Service Discovery
          • Instance Discovery
          • Instance Config
          • Instance Performance

Installing the Alibaba Cloud: Aliyun PowerPack

Before completing the steps in this section, you must import and install the latest version of the Alibaba Cloud: Aliyun PowerPack.

By default, installing a new version of a PowerPack overwrites all content from a previous version of that PowerPack that has already been installed on the target system. You can use the Enable Selective PowerPack Field Protection setting in the Behavior Settings page (System > Settings > Behavior) to prevent new PowerPacks from overwriting local changes for some commonly customized fields. (For more information, see the section on Global Settings.)

The minimum required MySQL version is 5.6.0.

To download and install the PowerPack:

  1. Search for and download the PowerPack from the PowerPacks page (Product Downloads > PowerPacksSyncPacks) at the ScienceLogic Support Site.
  2. In SL1, go to the PowerPacks page (System > Manage > PowerPacks).
  3. Click the Actions button and choose Import PowerPack. The Import PowerPack dialog box appears.
  4. Click [Browse] and navigate to the PowerPack file from step 1.
  5. Select the PowerPack file and click Import. The PowerPack Installer modal displays a list of the PowerPack contents.
  6. Click Install. The PowerPack is added to the PowerPacks page.

If you exit the PowerPack Installer modal without installing the imported PowerPack, the imported PowerPack will not appear in the PowerPacks page. However, the imported PowerPack will appear in the Imported PowerPacks modal. This page appears when you click the Actions menu and select Install PowerPack.