VMware Labs just released their latest Fling called SilverLining which allows you to build a simplified user-interface for vCloud Director which can be run from any modern web-browser that supports HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript. Project SilverLining actually started out as an student intern project and there is a research paper that goes into more detail about both the design and implementation which you can read more about here.
The Fling includes the following features:
A flexible vCloud Director 5.1 SDK for JavaScript implemented using vCloud API
A reference implementation with a responsive UI done in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript
Use of metadata feature to enhance the UI with custom attributes on templates and vApps
Supports local storage in HTML5 to support offline mode
Notifications system to support long running operations
Separation of form and content of the backend processes from UI updates
Easy install script
To get started, you will need access to a vCloud Director 5.1 system and administrator privileges within the guestOS to install the SilverLining Fling. In addition, you will also need to ensure the system that is running vCloud Director includes both the zip and unzip utility. If you are using the vCloud Director Evaluation Appliance, the zip utility is not included by default and you will need to install it from a SLES repository as noted in the Fling instructions tab.
Once you have installed the Fling and restarted the vCloud Director service (this can take a few minutes), you should then be able to login to SilverLining interface by pointing your browser to the following URL:
https://[VCD-IP]/cloud/silverlining/index.html
When you first connect, you will need to configure the default vCloud Organization that you would like to use and this can be changed at any time. Next, you will will need to provide your credentials which you would normally use to login to the vCloud Director interface. Once logged in, you will see all the vApps that you have deployed and the amount of resources being consumed. If you click on the Library button on the upper left hand side, it will take you to the all the vCloud Director Catalogs that you have access to. From the Library, you can easily deploy from any of the vAppTemplate’s and you may also customize if you do not wish to use the defaults already set. If we log into our regular vCloud Director interface, we can see that our new vApp has been deployed. If we click into the Metadata section of our vApp, we can see how the vCloud Metadata is being utilized by our custom interface by providing the number of downloads as well as marking a vApp as a “Favorite”. This is a very simplified example on what you can do with the vCloud Metadata.
Hope you give this cool new Fling a try and I am sure the folks who developed this Fling would love to hear any feedback or comments you may have.
Additional Resources:
Here is another simple example of using the new vCloud Director 5.1 SDK for Java called vcloud-client
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Next, you will will need to provide your credentials which you would normally use to login to the vCloud Director interface.
Once logged in, you will see all the vApps that you have deployed and the amount of resources being consumed.
If you click on the Library button on the upper left hand side, it will take you to the all the vCloud Director Catalogs that you have access to. From the Library, you can easily deploy from any of the vAppTemplate’s and you may also customize if you do not wish to use the defaults already set.
If we log into our regular vCloud Director interface, we can see that our new vApp has been deployed. If we click into the Metadata section of our vApp, we can see how the vCloud Metadata is being utilized by our custom interface by providing the number of downloads as well as marking a vApp as a “Favorite”. This is a very simplified example on what you can do with the vCloud Metadata.
