Getting started

Use Cloud Automation Manager on IBM Cloud Private to create and edit templates and services that implement common business patterns and to deploy them in your cloud environment. After they are deployed, you can manage and access the instances from the Cloud Automation Manager user interface.

After you install Cloud Automation Manager on IBM Cloud Private, to get started with Cloud Automation Manager, create and deploy a template or a service to your cloud provider.

For information about installing Cloud Automation Manager on IBM Cloud Private, see Planning the installation.

1. Access the Cloud Automation Manager user interface by entering the following URL in your browser:

   https://<CAM_IP_address>:<cam_port>/
   

   where <CAM_IP_address> is the virtual IP address that is used to access your IBM Cloud Private cluster user interface. In standard clusters, it is the virtual IP address of the master node.

   As IBM Cloud Automation Manager runs on top of IBM Cloud Private, you log in through IBM Cloud Private. After successful authentication, you get redirected to Cloud Automation Manager automatically. IBM Cloud Private supports several kinds of LDAP and for the complete list of supported LDAPs, see Configuring LDAP connection .

2. Click the menu icon in the upper-left corner of the window to display the navigation bar.

3. Click Cloud Connections to set a connection to the cloud provider where you want to deploy your template. For information about creating a connection, see Managing connections. Cloud Automation Manager supports the following cloud providers:

   • Amazon EC2
   • IBM
   • IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
   • IBM Cloud Private
   • IBM PureApplication
   • IBM Cloud Orchestrator
   • Microsoft Azure
   • Google Cloud
   • Huawei Cloud
   • Nutanix
   • Openstack
   • VMware NSX-T
   • VMware NSXv
   • VMware vSphere

4. Create a template.

   • Click Library > Templates to create a template or click library link in Create your Template section. For more information, see Creating a template.
   • If you are new to Terraform, click Terraform in Useful links > New to terraform? section to know more about it.
   • You can also create and modify templates from Cloud Automation Manager Template Designer. Click Template Designer in Useful Links > Edit your Templates! section.
   • Click Template Library in Useful links > Discover Templates and Services section.

   For more information, see Cloud Automation Manager Template Designer.

5. Create a service.

   • Click Library > Services to create a service.
   • Click service library link in the Create your Service to create a service and service instance.
   • Click Service Library in Useful links > Discover Templates and Services section.

   For more information, see Creating a service and Creating a service instance.

6. View deployed instances and perform action on the related resources.

   • Click Deployed Instances > Templates.

   • Click deployed instances link in the Manage Deployed Instances section to view the deployed instance and perform actions on the related resources.

     For more information, see Viewing template instance details.

   • Click Deployed Instances > Service Instances.
     For more information, see Viewing service instance details.

7. Create content runtime.

   • Click Manage > Content Runtimes.

   • Click Content Runtimes in the Useful links > Working with advance content? section.

     For more information, see Provisioning and managing your content runtime infrastructure.

8. Click Manage > Email Configuration to configure Email SMTP server. For more information, see Managing Email Configuration.
9. Click Manage > Shared Parameters to create and manage Data types and Data Objects. For more information, see Managing shared parameters from the user interface.

You can do the following operations from the menu options available underneath the user icon that is located on the top right of the Getting Started page:

• To log out of Cloud Automation Manager, click Log Out.
• To know the version of Cloud Automation Manager, click About.
• To track the number of virtual machines used, click Usage. You can see this option only if you log in as a cluster administrator. For more information, see Managing the usage of virtual machines in Cloud Automation Manager.

The currently logged in user name is also displayed underneath the user icon.

If you want to hide the Let's get started section of the screen and just see Useful links, click Hide it. On the top right of the page, click Expand this row to bring the view back.

From the Getting Started page, you can join the community, contact support, suggest a feature, and open the Cloud Automation Manager Knowledge Center.