Overview
Nimbul is an open-source, enterprise-oriented cloud management tool developed at NYTimes.com. The Nimbul UI helps you manage and monitor cloud provider accounts, server clusters and instances, and user accounts. Nimbul also offers a publisher framework and command-line tools.
At a Glance
Web-Based User Interface
Nimbul offers an easy-to-use web-based interface, with standard page elements such as tabs and tables. Most Nimbul “objects” (such as servers and accounts) are linked to detail pages, allowing you to get a quick overview and then click through to get more information or make changes.
When you first log in, a dashboard view gives you quick access to the main system objects and your recent activity. The rest of the Nimbul UI has three main areas:
- Clusters: View and manage server clusters; launch, reboot and terminate instances; get details about currently running instances; click through to server profiles.
- Provider Accounts: View and manage cloud provider accounts, including DNS information, IP addresses, storage volumes, images and security settings.
- Administration: View and manage users, daemons, system messages and exceptions (requires administrator access).
For more information on the web-based UI, see Navigation and UI Elements.
Architecture
Nimbul’s architecture is straightforward and flexible. Built on the Amazon APIs, Nimbul consists of the following:
- A library
- A set of adapters (EC2, SQS, S3, Auto Scaling)
- The publishers framework (for more information, see Publishing Account Information)
- The server tasks framework (for more information, see Managing Server Tasks)
- The web-based UI
All of these pieces can be customized to suit your cloud provider accounts and local environment.
Features
The following list is just a sampling of Nimbul’s features.
- Enterprise-oriented:
- Supports clusters, allowing you to “slice” your cloud accounts
- Supports LDAP and database authentication, as well as SSH access
- Supports user roles, access rules, firewall rules and security groups
- Designed to be cloud-agnostic: Version 1.0 of Nimbul supports Amazon EC2 only, but its concepts and structures are designed to be adaptable for most infrastructures and providers.
- Flexible: Offers a publisher framework, command-line tools and scripts to support operations when the Nimbul UI is unavailable
Background
At The New York Times, we developed Nimbul as an alternative to commercial cloud management services. Our main objective was to develop an enterprise-oriented solution to support multiple server clusters and various levels of user access.
Nimbul will help you manage your cloud accounts, but it won’t “take over” your accounts: after you have implemented Nimbul, you can still manage your cloud accounts with other tools. Nimbul even supports external management by offering command-line tools, a publishers framework and a set of server scripts.
Setup
To set up Nimbul, start with the Nimbul+AMQP AMI.
Refer to the install.sh file for more details about installation and setup. Review the text files under doc/ for additional setup information.
Using Nimbul
For best results, first familiarize yourself with the Nimbul interface by reviewing the topics under Getting Started. Review the rest of this Nimbul UI user’s guide by using the menu on the left.
Next: Getting Started »