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Switch Cloud Portal

What is the Switch Cloud Portal (SCP)?

The Switch Cloud Portal (SCP) is a centralised platform that serves as the gateway between Switch Cloud users and services. It streamlines cloud resource management through a unified interface, allowing users to efficiently manage projects, invite members, and access their services.

The following set of standard services are available through the Switch Cloud Portal in self-service:

  • Switch Cloud Compute: Powered by the resilient OpenStack framework, our service offers a versatile and dependable platform for virtual machines
  • Switch Cloud S3: Built on the robust Ceph storage system, our object storage solution is designed to seamlessly manage vast amounts of unstructured data.
  • Switch Cloud Kubernetes: (on request) Orchestrates containerised applications, ensuring consistent deployment across environments.

Features and Benefits

  • Unified Interface: Manage Compute, Kubernetes, and S3 services from a single platform.
  • Collaboration: Invite and manage team members to collaborate on specific projects or across the Organisation.
  • Audit Logs: Monitor actions for compliance and transparency across the Organisation.
  • Scalable Services: Activate and manage services tailored to your Organisation’s needs.

Terminology and Structure

Understanding the structure and terminology of the Switch Cloud Portal is essential for using it effectively.

Organisation

An Organisation represents a customer’s institution or company. It is the highest-level entity in the portal, and all resources (such as projects, members, and services) belong, directly or indirectly, to an Organisation.

Project

A project is a logical container within an Organisation, designed to segment specific workloads or applications. Organisations can create multiple projects to isolate and manage different initiatives, typically aligning each project with a distinct application or subject area. Depending on the project’s requirements, services such as Compute, Kubernetes, and S3 can be activated and managed independently.

Membership and Permissions

The Switch Cloud Portal offers two membership scopes, each defined by the specific invitation a user receives and determining their role and permissions within the Organisation:

  • Organisation-Level Membership (Organisation Owner): Users invited at the organisation level receive full administrative rights across the entire Organisation. As Organisation Owners, they can create and manage projects, invite members at any level, and oversee all organisational resources and settings.

  • Project-Level Membership (Project Owner): Users invited to a specific project gain full administrative access within that project's scope. Project owners can manage project resources, configure settings, and invite or manage members within their assigned project.

Onboarding an Organisation

After a customer signs a contract with the Switch Cloud sales team, we receive a request for onboarding a new organisation on Switch Cloud, which practically means that a new Organisation is created in Switch Cloud Portal with the services available as per contract and the customer is invited as the first Organisation Member (Organisation Owner) that will be the one to initially set up the organisation.

The first organisation owner should take the following actions to get started:

  • Create Projects: Organise your workloads by setting up specific projects (for example "Web App", "Data Science").
  • Invite Members: Expand your team by inviting members to your organisation or specific projects:
    • Invite Organisation Owners: These users have full administrative rights across the Organisation. They are co-owners and can create and manage projects, as well as invite other members.
    • Invite Project Owners: These users are responsible for managing specific projects, with full administrative rights at the project level.
  • Activate Services: Activate the required services, such as Compute, Kubernetes, or S3, for each of your created projects to start using Switch Cloud resources.