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0035 Hosts

The host entity provides a simple model for the IT infrastructure (nodes, computers, etc) that data resources are hosted on. In today's systems, hardware is managed to get the maximum use out of it. Therefore, the concept of a host is typically virtualized to allow a single computer to be used for many hosts and for multiple computers to collectively support a single host.

UML

Host entity

The concept of a Host is abstracted to describe a deployment environment that has access to hardware and has a basic software stack, typically including the operating systems.

The host can be linked to its location through the AssetLocation relationship.

DeployedOn relationship

The DeployedOn relationship shows where IT Infrastructure is deployed to.

BareMetalComputer entity

A BareMetalComputer describes a connected set of physical hardware. The open metadata types today do not attempt to model hardware in detail but this could be easily added if a contributor with the appropriate expertise was willing to work on it.

VirtualMachine entity

A VirtualMachine provides virtualized hardware through a hypervisor that allows a single physical bare metal computer to run multiple virtual machines.

VirtualContainer entity

A VirtualContainer provides the services of a host to the software servers deployed on it. When the server makes requests for storage, network access, and other resources, the VirtualContainer delegates the requests to the equivalent services of the actual host it is deployed on.

VirtualContainers can be hosted on other VirtualContainer's, but to actually run they need to ultimately be deployed onto a real physical Host.

DockerContainer entity

DockerContainer provides a specific type for the popular container type called docker .

HostCluster entity

A HostCluster describes a collection of hosts that together are providing a service. Clusters are often used to provide horizontal scaling of services.

Within the host cluster there may be a special host (node) that is controlling the execution of the other members. This host is modelled with a SoftwareServerPlatform that describes the cluster management platform, and optional SoftwareServer assets. SoftwareCapabilities needed to manage the cluster are linked to these ITInfrastructure using the ServerAssetUse relationship.

HadoopCluster entity

HadoopCluster describes a Hadoop cluster that uses multiple bare metal computers/virtual machines to manage big data workloads.

KubernetesCluster entity

KubernetesCluster describes a Kubernetes cluster that manages containerized applications across multiple bare metal computers/virtual machines.

The containerized applications managed by Kubernetes are represented as VirtualContainer's.

HostClusterMember relationship

The host cluster is linked to the hosts it is managing using the HostClusterMember relationship. The properties help to clarify how the member in the cluster is used.

  • memberRole describes the role of the member in a cluster. For example, in a kubernetes cluster there are two membership roles: the pods and the hosts. The membershipRole can be set up to show which hosts are the containers running as pods and which are providing the processing location as hosts. The pods and the hosts are then linked together using the deployedOn relationship to show where the various pods have been deployed.
  • additionalProperties provides a place to add additional information about the membership of the cluster such as configuration properties.
Deprecated types
  • DeployedVirtualContainer - use DeployedOn, which is more general.

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