The following guide will provide you with the necessary information on the CirrusGrid dashboard usage and will help you to get acquainted with the offered possibilities.
To start with, you can check out the quick overview video below to get insights on the main functionality, available through the CirrusGrid intuitive UI:
For better acquaintance, we recommend creating a free account.
Tip: A short, interactive tutorial is also available directly within the dashboard through the Help > Tutorial option in the top-right corner.
Let’s start our detailed exploration of the CirrusGrid dashboard:
1. Click New Environment in the upper left corner of the dashboard.
2. The Topology Wizard will be opened, where you can fully customize your environment settings.
The full possibilities of this window are described in the Setting Up Environment article.
After finishing configurations, type your Environment Name, and click the Create button.
3. All of your environments will be listed in the central panel of the dashboard.
The following information within the columns:
Hover over a running environment to see multiple icons for its management: Set Alias, Region, Open in Browser, Settings, Change Environment Topology, Clone Environment, Start/Stop, Delete Environment, Add/Edit Env Groups.
Use Set Alias icon to provide an alternative environment name (domain will remain unchanged).
You can hover over the environment to instantly display its region (if multiple ones are available). Click on the appropriate icon (can vary based on your particular platform) to jump to the Migration tab of the environment settings section.
Click the Open in Browser icon to open the environment in a new browser tab.
Note: This option could be absent in case your environment does not include application server and load balancer layers.
4. Click on Settings to open a separate tab with numerous configuration panels, check the detailed description in the linked section.
5. To Change Environment Topology, select the needed option. Perform the required changes in the appeared Topology Wizard dialog box and click Apply to submit them.
6. To Clone Environment, click on the appropriate button. In the opened frame, specify a name for the new environment and click Clone.
More info:
7. To change the status of the environment, use the Start and Stop buttons.
Note: When the environment is stopped, only the Settings, Clone Environment, Start, and Delete Environment buttons are available for it.Also, the Settings tab for such an environment will contain only four active options: Collaboration, Change Owner, Migration, and Info.
8. To Delete Environment, click on the following icon and confirm the action by entering your password.
9. Hover over the Tags column to manage the groups of this environment with the Add/Edit Env Group buttons ( or respectively).
There are eleven options within the environment Settings tab: Custom Domains, Custom SSL, SSH Access, Endpoints, Firewall, Monitoring, Collaboration, Change Owner, Migration, Export, and Info.
1. Select Custom Domains to access the following suboptions: Domain Binding and Swap Domains.
2. Choose the Custom SSL option and upload the necessary files to apply your custom SSL certificate.
Note: This feature can be configured only for the certified application servers and load balancers with public IP attached.
3. In the SSH Access section, you can see the Public Keys, SSH Connection, and SFTP / Direct SSH Access tabs. The first one allows managing your public SSH keys. The second one shows how to access your environment (either via SSH Gate or Web SSH). The third provides details on the connection over the SFTP/FISH protocols.
4. Within the Endpoints section, you can manage the mapping of your containers TCP/UDP ports for ensuring their collaboration with external resources via a direct connection.
More info: Endpoints
5. The Firewall section allows setting Inbound and Outbound Rules to manage access to your containers. These rules allow to explicitly define which connections should be accepted and which ones – blocked.
More info: Container Firewall
6. Select Monitoring to configure resource consumption tracking for the environment.
Use Load Alerts for setting new triggers (or adjusting the default ones) to receive the appropriate email notifications in case the specified resource’s usage exceeds the stated limits.
Within the Auto Horizontal Scaling suboption, you can configure triggers to control containers number within the layers (except the Maven build node). Scaling conditioning is defined based on the CPU, Memory, Network, Disk I/O, and Disk IOPS consumption.
The Events History section contains records about all the events that occurred due to the triggers configured in the subsections mentioned above.
7. In the Collaboration section, you can view and manage the list of accounts, which have access to the current environment.
In case you need to grant access to another user, click Add and fill in the Email field. You can also tick Change Topology / SSH Access if you would like to give such permissions. Click Save.
More info: Account Collaboration
8. Click Change Owner to transfer environment to another user account within the confines of a single platform.
More info: Environment Transferring
9. Choose Migration to move your environment to another set of hardware (region).
Note: Availability of this option, as well as access to each particular environment region, depends on your hosting provider’s settings.
More info: Environment Migration between Regions
10. Select Export to pack all your environment’s settings and data into a single downloadable file. Subsequently, it can be restored at another hosting provider’s platform, creating an identical environment copy.
Note: Currently, Windows nodes, Storage, Elastic VPS, Maven, and Docker containers are exported without any data inside. In such a case, you’ll need to transfer the required files and configurations manually.
11. Switch to the Info section to see additional information on the environment Domain, its Owner and Creator (can differ due to the account collaboration feature), Region, the Creation Date.
That’s all of the environment settings.
Click on the arrow key before the environment name within the dashboard to reveal the list of node groups it is consists of (e.g. load balancers, application servers, databases, etc). You can also expand these layers to view the separate containers and deployed contexts within. Furthermore, each node is supplemented with a list of attached IP addresses (internal and external IPv4/IPv6 ones).
Hover over a particular layer or container to see the pop-up icons with different functions.
Use these icons to perform the following actions:
Next to the New Environment option, you can find the Import button. It processes the uploaded .json, .jps, .cs, .yml, or .yaml file to create a new environment (or modify the already existing one with an add-on) according to the settings, declared inside.
Tip: In particular, this feature can be used to create a copy of the environment from another CirrusGri installation (by exporting it on one platform and importing on the other).
Within the opened Import frame, you’ll see three tabs and Examples link to the Jelastic JPS Collection with numerous ready-to-go solutions:
For the detailed overview check the appropriate Environment Import document.
Upon clicking on the last Marketplace option at the top dashboard panel, you’ll access a separate frame with a list of the pre-packaged solutions for automatic installation.
These packages are divided into two groups: Applications to create new environments and Add-Ons to adjust existing ones. Herewith, you can search for the solution from both these groups using the appropriate field at the top-left corner.
Once you’ve located the desired package, click Install for it, and follow the steps in the appeared installation frame.
For the detailed overview check the appropriate Marketplace article.
CirrusGrid PaaS provides a possibility to create Environment Groups, which help to categorize your environments. For example, the administration of multiple projects becomes much simpler when each one is organized into a dedicated environment group. If needed, you can apply further division by creating subgroups, e.g. development/testing/production, servers/databases/storages, etc.
Tip: You can manage network isolation via the environment groups.
CirrusGrid PaaS provides a built-in search option for the dashboard. The core functionality is straightforward – access the Search form at the top-right corner (or use the Ctrl+F/Cmd+F shortcut), type a search term(s) and hit Enter. For example, you can locate a container by its IP/ID; search for the particular deployed project/environment; find and deploy applications from CirrusGrid Marketplace.
Herewith, the implemented search engine is highly customizable, which allows getting the most accurate results for the requests. Among the main options:
Additional details can be found in the help hint for the search form (circled in the image above).
Deployment Manager is located at the bottom of the dashboard. It stores applications to automate their subsequent deployment into your environments. There are two subsections within the tab:
Once your package is added to the Deployment Manager, it can be automatically deployed to the required environment by following the linked guide.
Note:
The Tasks panel is placed at the very bottom of the dashboard and contains live and historical data on the tasks that CirrusGrid PaaS is doing or has already done.
The following data is provided for each record:
Tip: If a collaborator works on the account, the icon for the appropriate actions is automatically customized to simplify tasks analysis. Hover over such a custom icon to view the email address of the corresponding account. Recently occurred errors can be reported directly to the Jelastic Support team using the dedicated icon next to the failed operation.
Tip: You can expand a task to view action parameters and server response (after completion). The content of these sections can be easily copied with the appropriate button that appears upon hovering over. Recently occurred errors can be reported directly to the Jelastic Support team using the dedicated icon next to the failed operation.
In case you need to view a complete list of actions performed on the account (i.e. not just the recent ones), switch to the Active Log tab (the magnifying glass icon). Here, you are provided with an advanced search and filter options to quickly locate the required tasks:
Using the Tasks panel, you can always track the activity on your account, as well as troubleshoot any issues.
Click the Settings button at the top-right corner of the dashboard to access User Settings configurations.
Here, you can find the following sections: Account, Access Tokens, SSH Keys, and Collaboration.
1. The Account section allows managing two-factor authentication for your account, as well as changing the password.
2. Within the Access Tokens tab, you can configure personal access tokens for your account.
3. The SSH Keys / SSH Access points open the same section with four sub-tabs:
4. The Collaboration option includes two items – Shared by Me and Shared with Me. The first one allows managing users that you’ve shared environments with, while the second one shows the collaborations that include your account.
For a detailed overview of the Account Collaboration feature, refer to the linked guide.
Depending on the account type (trial or billing), either the Upgrade Account or Balance sections at the top of the dashboard panel are displayed.
1. The default type of all accounts is trial, which provides a free of charge hosting period (limited by time or bonus money) with the restriction on the amount of provided resources.
Expand the Upgrade Account drop-down menu to see the following options:
2. Billing accounts are spared from any limitations but are charged according to the hosting provider’s pricing.
Click the Balance button to expand a list of the following options:
The last two sections of the dashboard are Help and Account (email address).
1. The Help drop-down menu provides access to multiple useful links:
2. Within the Account (email address) drop-down list, the following options are available:
Now, you know all of the basic dashboard possibilities and hopefully won’t have any problems working with it. If you still have additional questions, please contact the Support team of your hosting provider or refer to our technical experts at Stackoverflow.
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