SoftLayer
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
About SoftLayer
SoftLayer provides cloud, dedicated, and managed hosting through integrated computing environments, with data centers in Dallas, Houston, San Jose, Seattle, Washington D.C., Toronto, Asia-Pacific (via Singapore, HongKong, Melbourne), and Europe (via Amsterdam, Paris, London), and network Points of Presence worldwide.
Note: Please contact sales for more information about using this cloud with your RightScale account. More RightScale assets for this cloud will be released in the coming weeks.
RightScale Support for SoftLayer
Supported Features
Currently, you can manage your SoftLayer assets by stopping and starting your instances.
- Instances (Virtual Server in SoftLayer parlance)
- Images
- Instance Types
- Datacenters / Zones
- Managed SSH
- Public and Private VLANs
Tutorials
FAQs
Supported RightScale Objects
Published ServerTemplates
Machine Images
RightScale supports launching instances using the stock images supplied by SoftLayer. One can also bundle RightLink agent (RL v6.2) to create their own version of RightImages that can then be used with RightScale Server Templates.
-
Ubuntu
- 25GB and 100GB Ubuntu 10.04, 12.04, 14.04
-
CentOS
- 25GB and 100GB CentOS 5, 6, 7
-
RedHat
- 25GB and 100GB RHEL 5, 6, 7
-
Windows
- 2008 R2, 2012 R2
Instance Types
Softlayer does not provide pre-configured typical instance types per se, but instead they offer the ability to select CPU/core count and memory capacity when creating hourly compute instances. Rightscale provides a few pre-created instance types that can be used with your Softlayer account. These instances types will be seen under the Clouds > Softlayer > Instance Types menu in the Rightscale dashboard, and their resources are explained in the following table:
| Label | vCPU | RAM in GB | Local disk in GB | Purpose |
| gXSmall | 1 | 1 | 25 | General |
| gSmall | 1 | 2 | 25 | General |
| gMedium | 2 | 4 | 100 | General |
| gLarge | 4 | 12 | 200 | General |
| gXLarge | 8 | 16 | 300 | General |
| mSmall | 2 | 8 | 25 | Memory heavy |
| mMedium | 4 | 16 | 25 | Memory heavy |
| mLarge | 4 | 32 | 100 | Memory heavy |
| mXLarge | 8 | 64 | 200 | Memory heavy |
Note: Extra storage can be added to the instance. One can also rebundle images with extra storage.
Private and Public VLANs
RightScale supports launching of servers and instances into VLANs configured in the customer account in various datacenters. Servers and instances can be launched in either private-only VLANs (by specifying only the private VLAN at the time of server launch) or with multiple private and public interfaces. Instead of specifying a public and private VLAN, one can also choose to use "cloud-default" as a selection. If "cloud-default" is selected, SoftLayer will launch the instance in a public and private VLAN based on the VLANs configured for the account.
Please see Clouds->SoftLayer->Instances->New and the drop-down box for Subnets, on the RightScale Dashboard.
Known Issues and Limitations
Enable Private Network Spanning
Important
- With SoftLayer accounts, the "Enable Private Network Spanning" setting must be enabled. Please make this change in the SoftLayer portal:
- Click the private network link where you will see a link called Enable Private Network Spanning. This will allow you to enable your vlan spanning. If this is not enabled, you will see inconsistent behavior depending on what subnet the VM launches with.
- For more information see SoftLayer's Cross connects between two or more servers.
Account Mapping
Only one RightScale account can be registered for any given SoftLayer account. If other RightScale accounts try to add the SoftLayer account (even with another user/api keys) to their Dashboard, it will not work. So there is a one-to-one relationship with every RightScale account and SoftLayer account.
Additionally, if a customer would like to create additional users, these additional user permissions need to be set correctly to allow instance launches. You can create additional users and set their permissions in the following location after logging in as the admin user:
- (legacy portal) manage.softlayer.com: Administrative > User Administration
- (new portal) control.softlayer.com: Account > Users
Defect Support
To report any bugs related to RightScale SoftLayer support, please raise a support ticket from the Dashboard or email support@rightscale.com.
See also
- © Copyright 2015 RightScale Technical Support