Overview
This describes the SuperVIEW Hybrid Cloud Service — what it is, its architecture, and the procedure for customers to follow to get their SuperVIEW application hosted on the cloud.
SuperVIEW is a powerful web application for providing rich, interactive Gov 2.0 / Web 2.0 data exploration and engagement for public-facing and intranet web deployments.
Through RESTful interfaces, SuperVIEW utilizes SuperSTAR's powerful data analytics engine to quickly generate ad hoc, multi-dimensional tables for its visualizations. These tables can be generated from potentially large and complex underlying datasets.
The SuperVIEW Hybrid Cloud Services consists of two components: the SuperVIEW web application in a cloud service provided by the Google App Engine, which connects to the ‘back-end’ SuperSTAR server that provides cross-tabulation and processing of data.
The advantages of this approach are outlined below.
Automatic scaling — The Google App Engine automatically scales to handle peaks and troughs in usage. Our modeling shows SuperVIEW supports well over 200 concurrent users and 40 requests per second and still behaves normally.
Free or paid service — The customer has a choice of setting up the Google App Engine service as a free or a paid service. For a free service, quotas are in place on a number of resources that are measured by the minute or by the day. When a quota is exceeded, the SuperVIEW application is made unavailable to users for the remainder of that period. The customer has the following choices:
- Free service. You can have a free application that stops being available when one of the quotas is exceeded.
- Paid service that is 100% available. When a quota is exceeded, the customer is charged for any additional consumption of resources for that period.
- Paid service with a daily budget with higher quotas than a free service. Once the daily budget is exceeded, the application becomes unavailable to users.
Cached interface — The RESTful interface caches data into the Google App Engine environment. Over time, interactions with the SuperSTAR server are minimized, which increases the speed of the application.
Secure data —The core database and SuperSERVER software still resides in the client's own server environment, which addresses many security concerns. It is just the SuperVIEW application itself that is in the cloud, along with the cross-tabulated (and already aggregated) data that is passed to the cloud application.
Alternative for web hosting — For clients who already have a SuperSTAR infrastructure, external web hosting can sometimes be difficult to arrange. The Hybrid Cloud Service provides an easy and inexpensive alternative.
Flexible SuperSTAR hosting options — For clients new to SuperSTAR, the SuperSTAR server can also be hosted on a cloud service or a dedicated hosted server. These can be provided at an additional cost.
How to host SuperVIEW on the cloud
There are four basic steps to hosting SuperVIEW on the cloud:
Step 1. Implement your SuperVIEW application.
Step 2. Set up your SuperVIEW site for billing. (Optional)
Step 3. Choose your domain name.
Step 4. Set up a SuperSTAR server.
Each of these steps is described in detail below.
Step 1. Implement your SuperVIEW application
The first part of this step is to set up a space in the cloud for the application to be hosted. This step can be performed either by the customer or by Space-Time Research on behalf of the customer. The following tasks are required:
1. Create a Google App Engine account. The customer must provide a mobile phone number to verify the account details.
2. Create a space in the cloud for the application to be hosted.
The second part of this step is for Space-Time Research to deploy the SuperVIEW application to the Application Space. This step must be carried out by a Space-Time Research developer. After This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it is accepted as a collaborator on the Google App Engine project, the developer uploads the SuperVIEW application to the Application Space.
Step 2. Set up your SuperVIEW Google App Engine for billing (optional)
As described previously, you can set up the Google App Engine service as a free or paid for service.
When to set up a free service
We recommend that you set up a free service if you expect maximum usage to be under 140,000 requests per day. Space-Time Research’s profiling has shown that the SuperVIEW application will typically hit an outgoing bandwidth quota before any other quota. SuperVIEW can take an hour to run out of outgoing bandwidth (1GB/day) with 200 concurrent sessions and a total of 40 requests per second. Quotas are reset every 24 hours, so a maximum usage is in the order of 140,000 requests per day.
When to set up a paid service
We recommend that any customer expecting over 140,000 requests per 24 hours considers upgrading the Google App Engine service to be a Paid Service. You can enable billing, and then pay for the outgoing bandwidth by the Gigabyte. If required, you can control costs by setting up a daily budget. When the budget is exceeded, the application is made unavailable to the users for the remainder of that period.
Resources used by SuperVIEW that are subject to quotas include:
- the number of requests to the application
- outgoing and incoming bandwidth — the amount of data sent and received by the application in response to requests
- CPU Time — the total processing time for handling requests, including time spent running the application and performing datastore operations
- secure requests — the number of requests that use a secure connection (HTTPS)
- secure outgoing bandwidth — the amount of data sent by the application over a secure connection in response to requests
- secure incoming bandwidth — the amount of data received by the application over a secure connection from requests
- Data — the amount of data stored and transferred.
Step 3. Choosing your domain name
By default, Google App Engine sites are all located under the *.appspot.com domain. For example, a demo1 application would be hosted at demo1.appspot.com.
If you want a different domain name, you can set up a custom domain. The procedure below details the steps and is easily achievable with the assistance of an experienced Space-Time Research consultant.
1. In Google Apps, register the domain name you want to deploy under.
Notes:
• This is not the same as the Google App Engine. For more information see http://apps.google.com.
• Be very careful when you enter the domain name — you must enter the domain you want it to point to. For example, if I want to host my demo at demo1.spacetimeresearch.com, I register the spacetimeresearch.com domain name in Google Apps.
• You only need to register the name once for your domain.
2. Enable Google billing for a single user for the Google Apps account. (Cost is US$50 per annum.)
Google Apps asks you to verify that you own the specified domain.
3. Verify that you own the specified domain by setting up a custom DNS entry (a CNAME entry)—which is randomly generated by Google—for their domain that points to google.com. The customer system administrator usually does this. It serves no other purpose than to verify to Google that the account was created by the owner of the domain.
After up to 48 hours, Google will be able to verify that the domain is ’owned‘ by you. Once verified, you can add a new service to the Google App Dashboard. This is where the SuperVIEW application (your App Engine Service) gets added, and then a new URL is created.
4. Add a sub-domain. In the example above, you would now add demo1 as a sub-domain of spacetimeresearch.com.
5. Finally, alter your DNS to point to the actual hostname that you want to operate the application on. In our example, demo1.spacetimeresearch.com would be set to point to the Google Appengine account.
Step 4. Set up a SuperSTAR server
If a server is not already available to host SuperSTAR and your source databases, Space-Time Research can provide consultants to set up the remainder of the system. There are three recommended server options:
- The customer provides a physical server and the consultant installs SuperSTAR according to our standard implementation methodology. More information can be provided about our implementation methodology by request.
- The customer requisitions a dedicated physical server that is hosted by an external party. The SuperSTAR consultant can remotely install SuperSTAR according to our standard implementation methodology.
- The customer can choose to host the SuperSTAR system on a cloud service such as Amazon EC/2. This can be arranged either by the customer or Space-Time Research.
On-going Maintenance and Support
Once a SuperVIEW application is hosted in the hybrid cloud, Space-Time Research can provide continued administration and support of the system, including providing updates and configuration changes, for a monthly fee.