Self Service Catalogs

Self Service Catalogs provides the list of resources that can be ordered and provisioned for usage based on approval from relevant stakeholders. This allows the resources on cloud to be utilized in a consistent manner throughout an organization by following a strict approval mechanism.

Navigation

Click on Self Service in the Left navigation menu and select Catalogs option to land in Self Service - Catalogs screen.

The list of catalogs will be displayed in this screen. The catalogs can be viewed as 2 separate categories: Pre Bundled and Workloads.

The catalogs can be filtered using the dropdown provided in the top of the screen and relevant catalogs can be viewed, e.g., virtual machines. Also, the search box next to the dropdown can be used to search the catalogs using a search string.

Configuring Preferences for Catalogs

Preferences for the catalogs can be configured based on requirement. The following steps need to be performed to configure the settings for catalogs.

  1. Click on Preferences button in the Self Service - Catalogs screen. Preferences screen will appear.
  2. The currency and metering units will be configured based on the onboarded cloud accounts.
  3. Click on Modify Settings button in the Preferences screen.
  4. Select the preferred OS types in the OS Types section. The options are: Windows and Linux.
  5. Click on Save Settings button to update the preferences.

In the right side on the screen, list of onboarded cloud accounts will be listed. To configure the preferred settings for the cloud accounts, perform the following steps for required cloud accounts:

  1. Click on the '+' icon next to the cloud account.
  2. A new page with the default values configured for the cloud account will be displayed.
  3. Specify the secret key of the cloud account.
  4. Click on the Validate button.
  5. Screen with configurable cloud settings will be displayed.
  6. Select/specify the required values.
  7. Click on Save button to update the preferred values.

Creating a New Resource Catalog

The following steps need to be performed to create a new resource catalog.

  1. Click on the settings icon on the top left of CoreStack and select Resource Catalog from the menu. Resource Catalog screen will be displayed.
  2. Select the Cloud and Category from the dropdown lists.
  3. Click the required resource from the options listed.
  4. Click "Add New" link to add new OS image.
  5. Select Cloud account and other properties like Type, publisher, offer, version, OS, cost, Service level, etc., as per the requirement.
  6. Click on Create Catalog button to create resource catalog.

Editing a Resource Catalog

The following steps need to be performed to edit a resource catalog.

  1. Select the required Resource catalog to be edited from the list in Resource Catalog screen.
  2. Click Edit icon.
  3. Update the required changes on the fields that are editable.
  4. Click on Edit Catalog button to save the changes.

📘

Know More

  1. Resource catalogs like Network security group, Storage account, Availability set, Recovery service vault, Load Balancer, Application gateway will be listed if it is available in Azure portal.
  2. Load balancer requires that the Backend Pool to be created in Azure portal.

Creating a New App Catalog

The following steps need to be performed to create a new catalog.

  1. Click on Create New Catalog button in the Self Service - Catalogs screen.
  2. Select the service to be used from the Cloud Service Category dropdown menu. The options are: Compute, Storage, and Databases.
  3. Based on the Cloud Service Category selection, options in the Resource Classification field will be populated. Select the required option.
  4. Click on Continue button.
  5. Provide the following details in the next screen:
FieldDescription
BrowseUpload an image to used as an icon for the catalog.
NameSpecify a Name for the new catalog.
OverviewProvide a short overview about the catalog.
DescriptionProvide a detailed description about the catalog.
  1. Click on Save & Configure button to create the new catalog.

A new catalog will be created and listed in the Catalogs screen.

Editing a New App Catalog

The following steps need to be performed to edit an existing catalog.

  1. Select the app catalog to be edited from the list in the Self Service - Catalogs screen.
  2. Click on Update Catalog Property button in the right side.
  3. Modify the information configured in the catalog.
  4. Click on Update Configuration button to save the changes.

ITSM-ServiceNow Onboarding

ServiceNow can be onboarded into CoreStack and used for approving the self-service activities. To configure ServiceNow for self service, the following settings need to be ensured.

  1. Incident Management: Incident tickets must be created for all threshold alerts.
  2. Request Management (Workflow 1 – ServiceNow as the Self-Service Portal)
  3. Request Management (Workflow 2 – CoreStack as the Self-Service Portal) <link to 'Approving an Order section in Self Service – Order Management module>.
  4. Set the Approver as ITSM in the Governance tab.
  5. Set the Activity Queue Settings in the Tenants tab.

Refer ServiceNow section to know more about configuring ITSM for Self Service.