Datacenter Automation

Appcara on Tuesday announced a major upgrade to its AppStack cloud application automation and migration platform that makes it easier to deploy new and existing servers into the cloud. With the process of provisioning enterprise apps still painfully manual and time consuming, Appcara’s repository-based model-driven approach now can assist in migrating a wide range of existing servers into managed cloud environments.

“The majority of enterprises have existing servers in their network that were not originally provisioned with active management capabilities, and the resulting fractured management can often be an exercise in frustration,” said John Yung, CEO, Appcara. “AppStack’s Onboarding Agent makes it easier to tame the server sprawl that’s endemic today.”

New in the release is the AppStack Onboarding Agent that enables existing external Windows or Linux servers – either physical, virtual or cloud based - to become actively managed from the AppStack portal. With it, users can leverage AppStack’s powerful point-and-click capabilities to install and manage applications on these servers as well as manage lifecycle tasks pertaining to storage, security and monitoring. This enables simplified and centralized management of physical, virtual and cloud servers from a single portal.

AppStack also now enables users of Citrix® CloudPortal™ Business Manager (CPBM) to reap these automation benefits via the new AppStack Connector for Cloud Portal Business Manager. Verified as Citrix Ready™, the AppStack Connector for Cloud Portal Business Manager allows these users to take advantage of AppStack for enterprise workload automation as well as for cloud provisioning, operations and commerce in Citrix CloudPlatform or other cloud targets from a single, unified management solution. For a limited time Citrix Cloud Portal Business Manager users can download the AppStack Connector for free here.

This release of AppStack now also automates the deployment of Citrix® XenDesktop^TM - Citrix's leading Virtual Desktop and Virtual App Delivery solution - from the AppStack Marketplace, AppStack’s catalog of over 85 prepackaged enterprise applications available for fast point and click provisioning and management as cloud-based workloads.

“As cloud adoption grows, businesses are interested in leveraging the cloud for not just new cloud-native applications but also for existing enterprise applications,” said Krishna Subramanian, VP of Product Marketing, Cloud Platforms Group at Citrix. “Appcara and Citrix are partnering to accelerate time-to-value for customers by automating the deployment and management of enterprise applications such as XenDesktop in the cloud without requiring any rewrites to the application. The AppStack Connector for Citrix CloudPortal Business Manager enables a complete application solution for enterprises and service providers leveraging Citrix to build and deliver cloud services.”

In addition, this release of AppStack also supports:

- Auto-scaling policies - to automate provisioning of servers in response to peak loads, with the granularity to specify and monitor either an entire Workload, individual servers or groups of servers within a Workload based on a variety of metrics and policies.

- Enhanced App Publishing for multi-tier apps - The integrated App Marketplace Publisher includes improved support for multi-tier application with boot sequencing control in stages, allowing booting and configuring of specific servers ahead of other servers.

- Enhancements to Workload and server management, including full data copy functionality as part of AppStack’s point-and-click workload cloning and portability capabilities.

Appcara’s AppStack uses a patent-pending repository based application model of a workload that retains all the dependencies so that the software can dynamically update them to reflect any changes the user makes. This keeps the model always in sync with the user and the deployed workload - so there are no chances for inconsistencies. As a result AppStack can fully automate the provisioning of apps into a wide variety of and other cloud platforms, and also provide runtime point-and-click management of these apps through the AppStack Portal over the duration of the application lifecycle. This eliminates the need for any low-level coding or scripting as may be required by server template based solutions.