HP Cloud Service Automation - Part 3

HP Cloud Service Automation - Part 3

Fun with Tags! Before we get stuck into Offerings there are ways to organise Designs and Offerings within CSA that might help to know about. They aren't easily retrofitted but knowing how to use Tags means you can set these up as you go and structure things as an Architect more effectively.

Tags aren't seen or used by consumers, they are just ways to organise the information in CSA. You create separate Tags for Designs and for Offerings.

If you go to the Designs section, into either Sequenced or Topology you will see an icon at the bottom left of the screen like this:

Click on it to bring up the dialog to create a number of Design Tags. Click the +

Now enter in the information you require and do this a number of times until you have created sufficient tags to organise your Designs. Select Colours and an image:

If you want to use a custom image such as a particular customer's Logo then following the instructions below from CSA help:

Image - An image that displays for the tag. Click Change Image. Choose the image you want, and click Select. Click Upload to add your own image. Supported file extensions include .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, and .png. The recommended image size is 256 by 256 pixels, and the image will be scaled to the appropriate size. The images are stored in the %CSA_HOME%\jboss-as\standalone\deployments\csa.war\images\library folder of the HP CSA server.

You can now assign Tags to service designs as you create them. You will get your selection during the procedure as shown below.

If you already have a design you have to add a tag when creating a new version. Just use the Edit button in the Overview screen BEFORE you publish it again!

Now you can select the Tags on the left to only show those Design's with that particular design property. As your environment grows you may have many customer specific designs, some in testing, some ready for production and this will help ensure you organize those designs. If you add version 1.0.4 to a Test Tag and then 1.0.5 to a Production Tag, the Design will show up in both Tag entries but with the correct version ID against it.

You can edit Tags and change icons and colours afterwards. If you delete a tag, the version of the design goes back to Tagless.

Offerings also provide Tags as a way to structure them within CSA. You can assign a Tag on creation or when creating a new version (before you publish it). You click on the same icon and get the dialog below to start generating Offering Tags:

This is similar to the Design Tag screen and much the same process. The new offering version I'm creating below gives me the opportunity to select a Tag here.

You can also edit an existing Offering that isn't published (Either create a new version, or unpublish an existing Offering, edit the Tag and publish again).

There's not much more to Tags than that but it's handier earlier on how they can make your life easier!