Establishing Your VPC Project on Zadara’s zCompute Platform

What is Zadara zCompute?

Zadara’s zCompute is a fully managed cloud compute service that provides virtual servers with enterprise-grade performance and security. With zCompute, organizations can rapidly scale resources, customize server configurations, and gain seamless integration with other Zadara Edge Cloud services. This level of flexibility makes zCompute an ideal choice for a wide range of workloads, from development and testing to production applications.

Key Concepts of zCompute

Zadara zCompute is a fully managed cloud compute service offered by Zadara, a pioneer in enterprise storage-as-a-service (STaaS). Let’s delve into the key concepts of zCompute:

1. Virtual Servers with Enterprise-Grade Performance and Security:
   • zCompute provides virtual servers that offer high performance and robust security. These servers can be customized to meet specific requirements.
   • Organizations can rapidly scale resources as needed, making it suitable for various workloads, from development and testing to production applications.
     
     
2. Seamless Integration with Zadara Edge Cloud Services:
   • zCompute seamlessly integrates with other Zadara Edge Cloud services, enhancing its flexibility and agility.
   • This integration allows users to leverage additional services alongside their compute resources.
     
     
3. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with Terraform or OpenTofu:
   • Terraform or OpenTofu is an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool developed by HashiCorp.
   • IaC enables developers and system administrators to define, manage, and provision infrastructure resources in a declarative way.
   • By integrating Terraform with zCompute, organizations can efficiently deploy and manage resources.

Considerations for a Dedicated VPC Project on zCompute:

1. Isolation of Tenants:
   • A dedicated VPC Project provides a walled garden within the cloud. Your resources are completely isolated from those of other tenants, allowing you to manage the risk of unauthorized access or security breaches. You have complete control over every aspect of your resources, network, security groups, access policies, and routing – ensuring your data stays firmly within your grasp.
     
     
2. Simplified Compliance:
   • For industries with strict regulations, such as healthcare or finance, a dedicated VPC Project is a game-changer. Isolate sensitive data and workloads to ensure compliance with data protection laws and a least privilege security posture. You can focus on your business applications with a defense in depth approach to your information security.
     
     
3. Scalability on Demand:
   • Business needs fluctuate, a dedicated VPC Project allows you to effortlessly scale your resources up or down as required. Add, remove, change instances, subnets, and other components with ease; ensuring your environment can adapt to your business needs.
     
     
4. Integration Possibilities:
   • Dedicated VPC Projects aren’t just isolated islands. You can leverage them to create a hybrid cloud environment, integrating with other cloud providers or your on-premises infrastructure. This flexibility allows you to build solutions that perfectly align with your specific needs.
     
     
5. Responsible Management:
   • It’s important to remember that dedicated a VPC Project offers a significant amount of control, but also requires more management effort. There is no one size fits all approach. Consider the business needs, define the benefits against the complexity and costs to determine if a dedicated VPC Project design is the right fit for your use case.
     
     

Creating a Provisioning Portal User:

Setting up a Zadara provisioning user involves creating an account on the Zadara Provisioning Portal and potentially enabling Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for additional security. Here’s a breakdown of the steps:

1. Register for a Zadara Account:

• Visit the Zadara registration page for your cloud, if using a Zadara Hosted Cloud environment, this can be achieved by visiting https://manage.zadarastorage.com/users/sign_up 
• Complete the registration form with your details 
  
  
  

• Activate your Account
  
  
  
  

2. Log in to the Provisioning Portal:

• Once your account is created, navigate to the Zadara Provisioning Portal: such as https://manage.zadarastorage.com/users/sign_in
• Use your registered username/email and password to log in to your account.
  
  
  
  

3. Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) (Optional but Recommended):

• Zadara recommends enabling MFA for increased security. This adds an extra layer of verification during login, typically through a security code from your phone.
• Look for the security settings within the Provisioning Portal.
• The specific steps for enabling MFA might vary slightly depending on the Zadara version you’re using, so you might need to consult the Zadara documentation for detailed instructions.
  
  
  
  

Create a Zadara zCompute Cloud Account:

After creating a provisioning user and login to the portal, you must create a zCompute cloud account. This account is similar to Google’s organization concept

1. Creating a new zCompute Service:
   
   
   
   
   
   

2. Defining the limits:

The service limits define the maximum resources the zCompute account can use in the cloud. These limits can be changed at a later stage if required.

3. Submit your request:

After you have submitted your request, Zadara will review (or the partner for partner hosted environments), make sure the requested resources are available and the request is valid.

You will get an email with your temporary credentials after your request is  approved.

4. Login to your cloud account:
   
   
   
   

You will be forced to change the temporary password credentials 

Setup a dedicated VPC Project:

It’s best practice to not put everything in the same project. With a dedicated project for your specific use case, it’s easier to manage resources, policies and to lock down access controls.

In this example we create a new project called “TaikunDemo”, which we will use to deploy a Taikun CloudWorks Kubernetes cluster.

Store the Access and Secret key in a safe place. If you do not copy it or save the credentials.csv, you must generate a new one at the time you need it as you cannot retrieve the Secret at a later date.

Conclusion: 

In summary, Zadara zCompute combines the best of cloud and on-premises environments, providing a powerful and flexible solution for managing compute resources. It has integration with IaC capabilities that further enhances efficiency and agility in infrastructure management.

We have demonstrated how to start the journey for your Zadara cloud environment and unlock the full potential of your applications. These can be using a virtual machine or a containerized application approach and the next part will focus on delivering a Kubernetes Cluster on top of zCompute using Taikun Cloud.

A dedicated VPC Project might be the key to delivering your next project. Talk to the Zadara team today to see how we can help you deliver  the right solution for your business!

Additional Information:

Introduction to Zadara zCompute Services available here: https://guides.zadarastorage.com/cs-introduction-guide/latest/