User manual
The Cloud Platform Portal is the web interface for managing your Lobster Data Platform environments. It is also known as the Self-Service Portal.
This manual describes the pages and modules of the Cloud Platform Portal. It is written for administrators and technical users who operate one or more Lobster Data Platform environments.
NOTE:
Some field labels in this manual reflect the design at the time of writing. Labels in the live product may differ slightly.
Terminology
The Cloud Platform Portal uses the following terms. Familiarize yourself with them before proceeding with the application.
Term | Definition |
|---|---|
Customer | The top-level business entity under which environments are organized. |
Environment | A deployable operational context, such as a test or a production environment. Every environment has a type. Most contracts license one production and one test environment. |
Resource | Any cloud resource that is part of an environment. Examples include an AWS EC2 instance or an AWS RDS database instance. |
Node | A specific machine or execution unit within an environment or a cluster. A node is a more precise term than resource. |
Cluster | A technical grouping of nodes that operate together, for example in a high-availability (HA) setup. |
DMZ | A gateway resource that guards network access to an environment. A DMZ is a type of resource. |
Installation ID | The identifier that uniquely identifies the system serving an environment, for example |
TIP
Always provide the installation ID when you contact Lobster support.
Localization settings
Use the localization settings to configure the language and the time zone for your account.
Language: sets the display language of the interface.
Time zone: sets the time zone used across the interface.
Your selection affects two things. It changes the appearance of the interface. It also changes the formatting of email notifications sent to your address.
All environments
The All environments page shows a combined overview of resources across all environments.
Each environment appears as a collapsible row.
Every row contains the resources that belong to that environment.
Click a resource to view further details.
For definitions and resource types, see Resources below.
Resources
The Resources page shows all resources associated with the selected environment. Click a resource to view further details.
Resource types
Every resource is one of the following types.
EC2: an AWS EC2 virtual machine that hosts a component of the Lobster Data Platform.
RDS: an AWS RDS database instance used by the environment.
EC2 resources also have a node type.
Standard: a standard Lobster Data Platform node outside any high-availability cluster.
Node controller: the controller node of a high-availability cluster.
Working node: a working node of a high-availability cluster.
DMZ: a gateway resource.
NOTE:
Not every environment includes every resource type or node type. This depends on the environment setup.
Restarts
The Restarts module lets you restart a licensed environment. You can trigger a restart immediately. You can also plan a restart for the future. The module shows detailed reports about current and past restart processes.
Triggering a restart
When you trigger a restart, you can provide the following parameters.
Description: free-text notes about the intent of the restart, for future reference.
Systems: restricts the restart to a defined set of cluster nodes. By default, the restart affects all nodes.
Grace period: the maximum time to wait for running background processes to finish before the system stops them.
Force hard restart: skips a graceful shutdown and restarts the underlying AWS EC2 instances directly, if selected.
WARNING:
Use Force hard restart only for recovery scenarios. It can cause data loss.
Planned restarts
You can trigger a restart immediately or plan it for a later date and time.
One-off: a single planned restart at the specified date and time.
Recurring: a restart that repeats at a defined interval, starting at the specified date and time.
Recurring restarts require an interval. Choose from a set of common intervals, or define a custom interval as a cron expression.
Restart details
The Restart details page shows detailed information about a running or past restart process.
Restart process
A triggered restart process runs through the following steps.
The system notifies users associated with the environment by email that the restart is starting.
The system mutes monitoring alerts for the environment to avoid false alarms.
The system triggers a self-managed restart on the Lobster Data Platform. This is the primary restart mechanism. It can fail if a major issue occurs.
If the self-managed restart fails, the system performs a hard restart of the underlying AWS EC2 instances.
A periodic health check waits until the environment becomes available again.
The system reactivates monitoring alerts.
The system notifies users associated with the environment about the result.
If the Lobster Data Platform returns to normal operation, the process completes successfully. Otherwise, the system marks the process as failed.
Timeline
The timeline shows the timestamped progression of the restart process. Every restart process follows this chain of statuses.
Pending: the restart has started, and a background process has not processed it yet.
In progress: the system is currently processing the restart.
Success: the restart process finished, and the environment returned to normal operation.
Failure: the restart process encountered an unexpected problem. See the restart log for details.
Restart log
The restart log provides detailed, live logging messages recorded during the restart process. Use it to investigate delays or failures.
Firewalls
The Firewalls module gives you access to the firewall configuration of an environment. You can add, change, and remove rules within defined restrictions. Changes apply immediately to the selected environment.
The firewall is stateful and blocks all traffic by default. You must explicitly allow a connection. The firewall automatically permits return traffic.
Rules
Every rule has the following parameters.
Security group: identifies the security group that the rule belongs to.
Direction: the direction of the allowance, seen from the environment.
Source or target address: the address space in CIDR notation. It matches the source or the target of a connection.
Port or port range: a single port, such as
50000, or a range, such as50000-50010.Description: free-text notes that document the intent of the rule.
NOTE:
Non-administrative access only allows you to edit inbound rules.
Restrictions
Every rule that you add or change must meet the following criteria.
The rule must be inbound. Outbound traffic is generally unrestricted.
The rule must use the TCP or the UDP protocol.
The rule must use one of the following ports or port ranges:
20,21,22,25,587,3305,5671,6619,8020,8443,9000,9443,30000-30004,50000-50049,51000-51049.
Exporting rules
Click Download rules at the top right of the page. This exports all rules of the environment as a CSV file.
Monitoring
The Monitoring module gives you access to monitoring data for the resources of an environment. Available metrics depend on the resource type.
The module plots each metric over the selected time period.