Product Introduction
This chapter introduces the platform positioning, key capabilities, component relationships, and basic concepts of ZCF to help users understand the overall platform before reading the functional chapters.
What Is ZCF?
ZStack Cloud Foundation (ZCF) is a unified cloud infrastructure platform for the ZStack product portfolio. It covers compute, storage, container, network, unified access, and observability and operations capabilities to help users build and manage cloud infrastructure with a consistent architecture.
For infrastructure deployment and operations across multiple products and environments, ZCF organizes product environments, infrastructure resources, and operations data into a unified platform. It provides a consistent experience for access, management, and analysis, reducing the complexity of managing separate systems and improving the efficiency of delivering, operating, and scaling cloud infrastructure.
Key Capabilities
ZCF provides the following key capabilities for resource hosting, product access, access management, and operations analysis across cloud infrastructure:
- Unified access: Uses unified login and navigation to help users access and manage related product capabilities from the same interface.
- Resource management: Integrates views of compute, storage, container, and network resources to help users understand infrastructure resource composition and operating status.
- Product access: Connects multiple ZStack products or environments to ZCF, laying the foundation for SSO, resource collection, and operations analysis.
- Observability and operations: Aggregates resources, metrics, logs, assets, dashboards, and reports to support cross-product operations analysis and routine checks.
- Installation and initialization: Uses Installer to deploy and initialize the ZCF control plane, SSO, observability component, and related base components.
Component Overview
This section describes the major components in ZCF based on their positioning. ZCF components fall into infrastructure components, platform capability components, and deployment tools. Infrastructure components provide compute, storage, and container resource capabilities. Platform capability components provide unified access, product integration, network services, data aggregation, and operations analytics. Deployment tools are used to install and initialize ZCF.
ZCF 1.1.2 includes the following major components:
| Positioning | Component | Description | Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure Components | ZStack Cloud Platform | Provides cloud platform resource capabilities, including VM instances, hosts, volumes, images, networks, auto scaling, and resource orchestration. | 5.5.24 |
| ZStack ZStone Distributed Storage | Distributed storage services that provide highly available and reliable storage for cloud platforms. | 5.5.4 | |
| ZStack Zaku Container Cloud Platform | Container cloud services for managing Kubernetes clusters, workloads, and container resources. | 3.9.0 | |
| Platform Capability Components | ZCF Unified Portal | Integrates ZCF functional modules and connected component pages to provide a consistent login, navigation, and cross-product access experience. | 1.1.2 |
| ZCF Cloud Federation | Connects ZStack products and ecosystem products so that their resources can be managed, collected, and analyzed through ZCF, and provides the foundation for SSO, resource collection, and observability analysis. | 1.1.2 | |
| ZCF Observability | Provides observability and operations analytics capabilities by aggregating resources, metrics, logs, assets, dashboards, and reports into cross-product operations views. | 1.1.2 | |
| ZCF Network Service | Provides network service capabilities. Based on OVN/OVS, it manages Fabric, Segment, Tier-0, Tier-1, and related network resources to support isolated, programmable, and scalable service networks. | 1.1.2 | |
| Deployment Tool | ZCF Installer | A wizard-based installation tool for deploying and initializing the ZCF control plane, SSO, observability component, and related infrastructure components. | 1.1.2 |
Basic Concepts
Before using ZCF, learn the following basic concepts related to managed environments, access methods, and data sources:
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Global Management | A management view for cross-component capabilities. After switching to Global Management, users can use global functions such as ZCF Cloud Federation, Dashboards and Reports, Operations, and Network Service to connect components, view unified operations status, and manage capabilities across components. |
| Region | A resource boundary for infrastructure resources. Infrastructure components such as ZStack Cloud, ZStack Zaku, and ZStack ZStone can belong to different regions. Use the region switcher to switch between a region and Global Management, so you can view resources in a region or perform global management tasks. |
| ZCF Cloud Federation | A feature for connecting and organizing product environments. With ZCF Cloud Federation, infrastructure components such as ZStack Cloud, ZStack Zaku, and ZStack ZStone can be managed by ZCF to support SSO, resource collection, and operations analytics. |
| Connected Component | A product, component, or environment connected to ZCF. After connection, its resources, metrics, logs, or identity configuration can work with ZCF based on supported features. |
| Unified Portal | Provides unified access and navigation. Users can log in through the Unified Portal and access ZCF functions and connected component capabilities from the same interface. |
| Observability Data | Data for observability analysis, such as resource status, performance metrics, logs, and asset information. This data is generated by connected components and aggregated by ZCF for dashboards, views, reports, metric queries, and log analysis. |
Basic Usage Path
When using ZCF for the first time, users typically follow this path to move from deployment to routine operations:
- Prepare the base environment: Install ZStack Cloud first, and prepare optional infrastructure components such as ZStack ZStone and ZStack Zaku as planned.
- Deploy the ZCF environment: Install by using the Installer or from the ZStack Cloud Application Market according to your environment, and deploy and initialize the ZCF control plane, SSO, ZCF Observability, and related underlying service components.
- Connect infrastructure components: Connect product environments such as ZStack Cloud, ZStack ZStone, and ZStack Zaku to ZCF to prepare for unified access, resource collection, and operations analysis.
- Configure access and identity: Use the Unified Portal and SSO capabilities to provide a consistent login, navigation, and cross-product access experience.
- View resource and operations status: Use dashboards, views, reports, metric queries, and log queries to view resource health, capacity, performance, and log information.
- Extend specialized capabilities: Install extension components such as ZStack ZNS from the ZStack Cloud Application Market as needed, and use network services, ecosystem product integration, report output, and other capabilities to cover more infrastructure management and operations scenarios.