Cloud Topology Designer: Design once – run anywhere.
Design applications to fit all clouds
Design once, run anywhere – Operating applications in any cloud without any problems, regardless of the operator technology: To enable software developers to do exactly this, T-Systems has developed the Cloud Topology Designer (CTD). The new tool makes it much easier for software developers to design cloud-based applications.
The software is free to use by any users to design and deploy applications on Open Telekom Cloud. The software is currently available only under a limited warranty as described in the Beta program.
* Using the Cloud Topology Designer itself is free of charge, but be aware that cloud resources (e.g., Virtual Machines, Storages, etc.) deployed by the software will be charged according the latest price list of the Open Telekom Cloud.
The difference to the classic approach
Up to now, anyone who wanted to migrate applications to the public cloud or the private cloud has had to resort to software development kits (SDK) or Infrastructure-as-Code tools (IaC) such as Terraform before they can take care of the actual application. However, this so-called bottom-up approach is not only time-consuming but also strongly focused on the infrastructure, while leaving the application layer out. For example, Terraform primarily provides interfaces to virtual machines (VMs) or networks, but is not designed for applications.
As a result, each application has to be individually designed and adapted for many cloud variants. This requires a lot of effort if companies want to use hybrid or multi-cloud scenarios. The CTD solves this Gordian knot, because once an application is designed once it can easily be operated in several clouds from different providers – in line with the motto: Design once – run anywhere.
The Cloud Topology Designer’s top-down approach focuses specifically on applications. Cloud architects use existing modules for this purpose, which they customize as required. This significantly reduces time and costs. Instead of having to spend weeks or even months on adapting applications to new infrastructure environments, applications can now be deployed in another cloud within minutes. With the CTD, companies benefit from a significantly shorter time-to-market.
Design your application once by drag and drop
Assemble components according to individual requirements
The solution’s ready-made building blocks include infrastructure components such as network, processors, and storage as well as application components (such as application server and database). Programming languages such as Bash, Python, and Ansible are also included in the CTD toolbox. This allows users to assemble the prefabricated IT building blocks in a drag-and-drop process and tailor them to their specific requirements as needed.
A simple application example: In the editor of the CTD an application server (e.g., nodejs) connects to a database (e.g., mongodb) via a port 27017. During deployment, the CTD provides the application with the necessary network connections and automatically generates all the security rules for the server to connect to the database on the given port.
Reusable modules from the service catalog
In addition, cloud architects can configure the lifecycle of an application component by assigning it instructions for maintenance steps such as starting, stopping or deleting. To avoid duplicate work in the software development, IT building blocks developed in-house can be stored as modular components that can be reused for other applications in the service catalog.
Upcoming feature: Users from multiple tenants can develop their application components and exchange them on the service catalog.
Run anywhere
An application design for multi-cloud
In order to describe applications, the CTD internally uses the TOSCA standard (Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications). It was developed by the international non-profit organization OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). The Cloud Topology Designer adds a front-end to the vendor-independent TOSCA description of an application, making it much easier to model a cloud environment.
Powered by open source
The Cloud Topology Designer is licensed as open source software. It is based on the two open source projects Application Lifecycle Enablement for Cloud (Alien4cloud) and Ystia Orchestrator (Yorc).
Many companies are reluctant to put all their eggs in one basket in cloud computing – instead they are increasingly using hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The TOSCA standard in the Cloud Topology Designer ensures the portability of applications for different cloud providers such as the Open Telekom Cloud, a local virtualization cluster or hyperscalers suchas Amazon Web Services and the Google Cloud Platform – there is no danger of vendor lock-in. The TOSCA components are independent of specific providers. Once a cloud architect has designed the application, anadministrator then selects the cloud provider(s) in whose infrastructure theapplication is to be deployed. In this way, the CTD accelerates the migration of locally hosted workloads in cloud environments enormously and reduces the time-to-market – because once designed, an application suits all clouds.
* Using the Cloud Topology Designer itself is free of charge, but be aware that cloud resources (e.g., Virtual Machines, Storages, etc.) deployed by the software will be charged according the latest price list of the Open Telekom Cloud.
Technical resources
![open-telekom-cloud_tutorials_icon]( "Open Telekom Cloud Tutorials")
Tutorials
The most important applications explained in detail.
Tutorials
![Open Telekom Cloud Documentation]( "Open Telekom Cloud Documentation")
API
Here you can find all API descriptions for authentication, applications and deployment.
API
![Release Notes]( "Release Notes")
Release Notes
Updates und new features of the Cloud Topology Designer.
Release Notes