The Cloud Consumption Interface (CCI) enables Automation Service Broker DevOps users to provision Supervisor namespaces and use its associated services to create Kubernetes workloads using mainly the VM Service and the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service within vSphere namespaces.
The Cloud Consumption Interface uses VMware Aria Automation projects and infrastructure and vSphere Kubernetes resources as the foundation on which CCI users can work with namespaces and associated services to create virtual machines and other resources. Services are pluggable UIs that follow SDK guidelines. They are built and tested as separate applications that have been incorporated into CCI.
CCI provides wizards that guide you through the process of using services to create virtual machines, and other resources. When working with services, CCI automatically generates YAML code that users can download to use as the basis of deployments or IaaS resources.
To configure virtual machines or other resources for deployment using CCI, you log in to Automation Service Broker, click the Consume tab and select Supervisor Namespaces. A Welcome page displays projects containing the namespace classes that are available to you.
Namespace classes are defined by administrators and function as templates that reserve resources for the namespaces that users create After you select a namespace class, you can create a new namespace. The namespace is your personal workspace with a set of resources and services.
If you dismiss the Welcome page, you can also start working from the CCI Home page. This page lists the namespaces and projects available to you on separate tabs. In addition, the tree view on the left shows a list of available projects, and you can expand it to view the namespace classes within each project. By default, neither of these pages are displayed for administrative users.
Project membership determines access to either cloud zones, Kubernetes zones, or both, and each of the following scenarios describes what you will see depending on your level of project access.
- Users who are members of project that is only configured with Kubernetes zones will see the Supervisor Namespaces node for CCI on the left menu for the Consume tab, but they will not see or have access to the Catalog or Deployments nodes on the Automation Service Broker left menu pane.
- Users who are members of a project that is only configured with cloud zones will see the Catalog and Deployments nodes on the left menu, but they will not see or have access to CCI through the Supervisor Namespaces node.
- Users who are members of a project that is configured with both cloud zones and Kubernetes zones have access to the Supervisor Namespaces node and to the Catalog and Deployments nodes on the Automation Service Broker left menu.
