Chapter 5. Cisco Prime Service Catalog

This chapter provides an introduction to Cisco Prime Service Catalog, a platform that incorporates an easy-to-use portal with a shopping cart checkout process that is similar to the process used by popular online retailers. The portal enables anyone within your company to request applications and services from your cloud infrastructure. Prime Service Catalog automates the delivery of these applications and services quickly, and removes the burden of coordinating the various complex interactions within IT that would take hundreds of phone calls and emails and take weeks or months to get your application deployed.

1. What is the role of Prime Service Catalog in delivering cloud services?

a. Orchestration engine

b. Part of UCS Director

c. Help desk software

d. Web-based front end that provides self-service provisioning of IT services

2. What is Stack Designer used for?

a. Nexus 9000 switch management software

b. Design of orderable application software and infrastructure stack templates

c. Nothing in the Cisco Enterprise Cloud Suite

d. Billing module in Prime Service Catalog

3. What protocol does RabbitMQ use to communicate?

a. REST

b. AMQP

c. TCP port 2342

d. BOCCE

4. Where in Prime Service Catalog can you change email notification templates?

a. You can’t

b. SendMail

c. Service Designer

d. Portal Designer

5. How can you find services in the end-user storefront of Prime Service Catalog?

a. Search for keywords

b. Browse the catalog

c. Click Service Items on the main page

d. All of the above

6. Where can you see a list of service items that you have provisioned under your account?

a. Stuff

b. Completed orders

c. My Stuff

d. None of the above

7. How do you change the graphical image of the application template in the service catalog?

a. Edit the application template and input a new URL with the image you want displayed

b. Upload a new image to the end-user storefront

c. Use the camera in your laptop to take a picture and then import it via email

d. All of the above

8. What functions can you perform in Service Designer?

a. Create authorization flows

b. Order cellular service

c. Drag and drop application components together

d. Create bundled offerings

9. When you click Build Service within Stack Designer, what template is generated?

a. Heat

b. CFN

c. Service Catalog Template

d. Cloud Pivot

10. Which open source project uses Heat?

a. OpenDaylight

b. Apache ZooKeeper

c. OpenStack

d. Snort

Prime Service Catalog accomplishes the goal of automating service delivery by allowing the user to self-provision common service offerings. When a user needs an IT service, or to make changes to a service already in production, they can log in to Prime Service Catalog and request the new service or change directly from the service catalog. As mentioned in previous chapters, the service catalog is really just a prepared menu of offerings or templates. By exposing this menu to the user, the whole process of provisioning services is greatly streamlined. Prime Service Catalog’s self-service portal provides the following:

Easy-to-use interface: The interface is simple and familiar, not unlike that of your favorite online retailer.

Comparison of standard options: You can view multiple offerings side by side to determine which best meets your requirements.

Rich interactive web forms: The user can choose from fully HTML5-based ordering forms that enable the creation of simple but sophisticated offerings. You can prepopulate values or ask for direct input from the user.

Policy control and governance: IT policy and governance are built in to the system to ensure that security and resource allocation is managed in real time.

Ordering and approvals: The ordering system includes cost and billing mechanisms as well as a built-in order approval workflow if needed for costly resources.

Online status updates: A built-in status system can provide real-time updates on the provisioning status of your application or service.

Figure 5-1 shows Prime Service Catalog’s role in managing IT service requests.

A home page that can be customized using custom style sheets either for the entire site or by different organizations, each of which may brand their IT experience in the catalog

Individual Showcase sections of the home page that can be defined by setting up service categories using concepts such as hierarchy, service name, or service description

Options to search for a service or browse through categories on the screen

A Manage My Stuff tool to help IT consumers manage subscriptions or orders

A Notification icon that lists all open orders and open authorizations for the user

A shopping cart where you can see ordered items and check out, similar to many popular e-commerce sites

A Home button to return to the home page at any time

Figure 5-2 shows the home page view of Prime Service Catalog.

Again, the main goal of Prime Service Catalog is to provide a self-service portal into the IT service catalog for full lifecycle management of IT services that allows the users in your organization to order those services with a pleasant “consumer of IT” shopping experience. Prime Service Catalog offers very advanced functionality, such as employee onboarding (processes such as ordering business cards, as a business process portal to order new employee laptops, and much more), but for the purposes of this book, we will focus on the use case of Prime Service Catalog as a tool for ordering Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS).

In addition to the portal, Prime Service Catalog also includes the following:

Service Designer: Used to build a category-structured list of orderable service items that can consist of physical hardware, virtual services, account setup, or any other class of service that IT offers

Stack Designer: Used to build application stack templates that can consist of physical or virtual infrastructure and software

Portal Designer: Used to create and modify the layout of the web portal for organizational customization

When you click an offering, you are presented with a detailed description of the service itself and any details you may need to know about what you should expect from the service. There can be videos, tutorials, and links to other web resources that the user may find valuable. In addition, you can find other user “reviews” of the service, including their comments and lessons learned. Figure 5-4 shows the bring your own device (BYOD) service description.

Under the My Stuff section of the main interface, you can see all of the services that are currently provisioned for your account. This view will show the service status, when it was provisioned, and other information about the service itself. You can also make changes to your services from here. Figure 5-5 shows the My Stuff view.

Stack Designer makes it easy to create application templates and publish them as a service in the service catalog. Stack Designer not only lets you visualize the logic connectivity of the application but also allows you to drag and drop application components into the application stack. Figure 5-7 shows the infrastructure view of Stack Designer.

Figure 5-9 shows the main page for Portal Designer, which gives you access to all of the customization capabilities for how Prime Service Catalog’s user portal looks and operates.

The front-end portal exposes access to services, service items, standards, and offerings through portlets, which are small pieces of software that provide access to the technical underpinnings of a service. You can replace these portlets with your own custom code, enabling you to build your own interface. Portlets can be built in JavaScript/HTML, ad hoc lists, or third-party compliant portlets.

With Portal Designer you can do the following:

Create portlets from external or third-party sources

Create portlets to highlight common services

Create portlets to show users what they already own, with links to services related to those items

Show announcements, video, or other types of media

Leverage RBAC to create a flexible user interface that is at once simple for casual users and advanced for power users

With Portal Designer you can build a feature-rich, consumer-of-IT interface that matches how your own organization operates and is structured. While PSC is intuitive and easy to use out of the box, the ability to create a unique experience for your end users may be a requirement for your organization. Cisco uses Prime Service Catalog internally (called eStore) and has customized its look and operation. Figure 5-10 shows Cisco’s implementation of Prime Service Catalog.

Create categories and keywords that end users may use to search for a particular service

Design the look and behavior of service forms, the interactive web page, determining which service requisitions are ordered and tracked in Prime Service Catalog

Construct request or service fulfillment plans

Configure authorization flows for service delivery

Configure service ordering permissions

Link email templates with processes that require email notifications

The Service Designer module is shown in Figure 5-11. The various tabs on the left side of the web interface are used to construct or modify a service, as described here:

Services: Create and modify service groups and their service definitions, including the delivery plan and presentation of the service. It also includes any active form components that are used in the service form. You can configure service order permissions, configure authorization flows for service delivery approval, and link email templates with processes that need email notification.

Dictionaries: Create and modify the dictionaries that specify the data fields required in a service. Dictionaries, a basic building block of a service form, include a group of data elements (fields) that allow users and service performers to enter and view data required to fulfill the service request.

Active Form Components: Create and modify reusable form components, which specify both the service’s look (via the configuration of previously defined dictionaries) and feel (via the definition of rules that can dynamically adjust both the form’s appearance and behavior). The appearance and behavior of a service form is determined by how the dictionaries and their component fields are configured as part of the active form components that are used in the service definition. Active form components provide the potential for reusability across service forms. With careful and thoughtful design, a designer may create an active form component from a commonly used dictionary, or set of dictionaries, and configure it only once. Then this form component can be included in as many services as necessary, with no additional configuration.

Scripts: Write JavaScript functions to supplement the rules defined in active form components and maintain JavaScript libraries.

Categories: Specify how services and service categories are displayed in the Service Catalog module. Customers may use categories to search for a particular service.

Keywords: Define and manage the keywords used in the service catalog search engine. Customers may use keywords to search for a particular service.

Objectives: Define and manage the measurable service delivery objectives defined in the Service Definition Offer tab.

Extensions: Define custom attributes for services and categories and manage the presentation of categories on the landing page of the Service Catalog module.

History: Track the service design change history and view the details based on the entity type or filter by the username.

Puppet uses an easy-to-read modeling language built on Ruby (a programming language) that allows you to deploy and provision software and hardware as needed. Puppet operates in a client/server model with the Puppet master as the server and the Puppet agent as the client. Puppet is model driven and very popular among organizations leveraging DevOps practices. Prime Services Catalog does not bundle a full Puppet implementation, but it does include a Puppet master to communicate with a Puppet environment if it is used to automate application or infrastructure deployment within IT. Cisco has a number of infrastructure platforms, such as the Nexus 9000 Series, that have a Puppet agent built in. Puppet is just one more way to interoperate with existing systems.

In this section you will see how to navigate the Prime Service Catalog interface, order a service from within it, and validate that your service is up and running.

Step 2. Your home page will be displayed. You will see in the upper left of the page the home button (looks like a small house) and a Browse Categories drop-down link to browse categories of service catalog items, as shown in Figure 5-13. If they are configured, you can also see commonly ordered services with a direct link at the bottom of the page.

Step 2. If there are additional subcategories within a category, continue to click through each subcategory until you locate the service you want. In Figure 5-15 you can see the two subcategories Application Platforms and Private Cloud IaaS, with Application Platforms selected.

Step 3. Once you have found the service you are looking for, do either of the following:

Click the name of the service to view a complete description of the service, cost structure, and any other pertinent information.

OR

Click Order to fill in the order form and order the service.

You can also perform a wildcard search by using the options shown in Table 5-2. Search parameters are not case sensitive.

Step 2. Once you have found the service you are looking for, do either of the following:

Click the name of the service to view a complete description of the service, cost structure, and any other pertinent information.

OR

Click Order to fill in the order form and order the service.

The service description can include some or all of the following information as seen in Table 5-3.

Step 1. Click Order and complete the order form (see Figure 5-19).

Mandatory fields on the order form are indicated by a red asterisk (*) and require you to fill them out before continuing. The information that you input on the order form is used by reviewers, authorizers, and service performers during the services delivery process. Whenever possible, Service Catalog will prefill information about you from your LDAP or local PSC profile.

Step 2. Once you complete the order form, click Submit. You will then see your order on the My Cart page, as shown in Figure 5-20.

Some of the items you can order immediately. With others you can add multiple items to the shopping cart and order them all together.

Step 3. Click Place Order on the My Cart page to order the service and finish the ordering process.

To view order status details:

Step 1. Go to Service Catalog > Manage My Stuff > Open Orders; example results are shown in Figure 5-21.

Step 2. Click the requisition number to view the order details shown in Figure 5-22. As shown in the box on the right, three different views are available: Summary, Comments & History, and Attachments.

The Summary view of the requisition displays the following sections:

Requisition: Provides customer and initiator information, overall status of the requisition, and create/submit dates.

Services: Lists the name of each service in the requisition, along with its current status, standard duration, and cost information. Click the service name to view the completed order form.

Delivery Process: Lists the milestones (the major tasks of reviewers, approvers, and service performers) in the service delivery process, along with the due date for each milestone and its current status. The possible Status column values are

TBD: The due date will be determined when any required authorizations have been completed.

Approximate: The due date forecast has been approximated based on the calendar of the task’s default delivery team.

Estimated: The due date forecast estimate has been based on the duration of scheduled tasks when the order is submitted.

Completed: A task in a service delivery plan has been successfully completed.

The Comments & History view displays the comments of reviewers, authorizers, and performers who work on the service request. It also displays a history of actions, such as automated email and task completions, that are logged by the system. To add a comment, enter it in the Add Comments field and then click Add. Your comment will be visible to all users who can view the requisition.

The Attachments view enables you to view and attach documents associated with the requisition. To associate a document to the requisition, click Browse, locate and choose the file you wish to attach to the requisition, and click Add.

In addition to Application Templates, Stack Designer has tabs for Infrastructure Templates, Global Parameters, and Target Types.

Infrastructure templates are imported from UCS Director and, if installed, Cisco Virtual Application Cloud Segmentation (VACS) and Intercloud Fabric for Business. The types of services available from UCS Director are container templates, container catalogs, and standard catalog virtual machines. These infrastructure templates include networking configuration, virtual machine images, and topology. From VACS, Prime Service Catalog imports the following templates: Cloud Services Router virtual machine, Virtual Security Gateway virtual machine, and application virtual machines. Figure 5-24 shows the Infrastructure Templates tab.

The Global Parameters tab, shown in Figure 5-25, stores commonly used configuration parameters needed for application provisioning. These can be added here or as part of the application stack building process.

Target types are integration points that the application stack can be built against. The default target type for Enterprise Cloud Suite is UCS Director. Figure 5-26 shows the Target Types tab.

When a user orders an application template, Prime Service Catalog begins the process of managing the fulfillment of the request. PSC starts off by processing any required approval steps. Once the request is approved for execution, PSC determines if any UCS Director–managed infrastructure provisioning must take place. If so, PSC makes a remote call to UCS Director and initiates the requisite workflow. PSC can also initiate external actions via internal scripts, integration with Cisco Process Orchestrator, and other external components. As PSC moves into the application configuration element of the request, it leverages its internal Puppet service and Heat templates to complete the application deployment.

Step 1. Log in as an administrator in Prime Service Catalog.

Step 2. Choose admin > Switch To > Stack Designer (see Figure 5-27).

Step 3. In Stack Designer, click Create a New Template (see Figure 5-28).

Step 4. Enter basic information about your application, as shown in the Catapp example in Figure 5-29.

Step 5. Click Add Image to select an image that will be displayed in the service catalog.

Step 6. Enter the URL for the image location (see Figure 5-30) and click Save.

Step 7. Select an infrastructure template. Figure 5-31 shows the result of selecting the template for a two-tier application.

Step 8. Add software components and input required service parameters, similar to the example shown in Figure 5-32.

Step 9. Click the Build Service button.

Step 10. After you click the Build Service button, the Edit Service window will appear. Click Include to select the folder categories under which the new service will appear when searching or browsing through the catalog (see Figure 5-33).

Step 11. Click the Permissions tab of the Edit Service window, and then click the Add Permission drop-down arrow to select who in the organization can see the new template (see Figure 5-34).

Step 12. You will be notified when the service has been saved successfully, as shown in Figure 5-35. Click Save and then Close.

Step 13. Return to the list of applications and you will see the new application listed, as shown for Catapp in Figure 5-36.

Heat is exclusively used in Prime Service Catalog to orchestrate application model templates that are built with Stack Designer. These templates can be constructed in the Heat Orchestration Template (or HOT) format and allow for interoperability because Heat is a nonproprietary open source technology. HOT is often written in YAML (Yet Another Markup Language) and is easy to read. These templates have become a common way to provide Heat resource plug-ins that allow Heat to orchestrate UCS Director and Puppet. The goal of Heat is to create a stack that represents a collection of virtual machines and their configurations, including networks, security groups, and other parameters. A Heat Template file is made up of four sections:

Resources: This has the details of the stack you are building and includes the objects that will be created and/or modified when Heat orchestration executes. Resources can be virtual machines, data store volumes, security groups, IP addresses, or any other object within UCS Director.

Properties: Properties are the variables within your template and can either be hard coded (i.e., a specific virtual machine image) or can be placeholders that the user is prompted to input.

Parameters: Parameters are the actual property values that must be passed when executing the Heat template.

Output: Output includes the return values sent to the user or Prime Service Catalog upon execution of the template.

Example 5-1 shows a HOT file example written in YAML.

Example 5-1 Output of a HOT File Example Written in YAML

Click here to view code image

---

{
  "heat_template_version" : "2013-05-23",
  "parameters" : {
    "CreateServiceName" : {
      "type" : "string",
      "description" : "Create Service name"
    },
  },
  "resources" : {
    "container" : {
      "type" : "Cisco::ServiceCatalog::Service",
      "properties" : {
        "createservice" : {
          "Ref" : "CreateServiceName"
        },
        "deleteservice" : {
          "Ref" : "DeleteServiceName"
        },
        "customerloginname" : {
          "Ref" : "CustomerName"
        },
        "sections" : {
          "UCSD_ContainerInformation" : {
            "Name" : {
              "Ref" : "ContainerName"

---

Prime Service Catalog

service catalog

lifecycle management

BYOD

templates

Portal Designer

Service Designer

Stack Designer

AMQP

RabbitMQ

Heat orchestration

OpenStack

Keystone

YAML