Overview of the App Controller Console

Applies To: System Center 2012 - App Controller Beta

[This topic is pre-release documentation and is subject to change in future releases. Blank topics are included as placeholders.]

System Center 2012 - App Controller introduces a unified management console for managing private and public clouds and for deploying services and virtual machines.

  • Navigation pane

    This pane is on the left side of the console and is usually the first pane you use for navigation in the console. This pane can be expanded and collapsed if you want to increase the width of a list view without changing the size of your browser window. The navigation pane contains links to the following pages:

    • Overview—Provides access to the Overview page, where you can perform common management tasks and view the usage and status of private and public clouds, deployed services and virtual machines. For more information, see Overview.

    • Clouds—Provides access to a list of all private and public clouds, where you can manage connections to private or public clouds and deploy services or virtual machines. For more information, see Setting up Public and Private Clouds. Clouds can be displayed as a list or as cards.

    • Services—Provides access to a list of all services, where you can manage deployed service configuration settings, deploy new services or virtual machines to private or public clouds, or upgrade deployed services and virtual machines. For more information, see Deploying Services and Virtual Machines. Services can be displayed as a list or as cards.

    • Virtual Machines—Provides access to a list of all virtual machines, where you can manage existing virtual machines or deploy new virtual machines to private clouds. This page does not contain any Windows Azure virtual machines. For more information, see Managing Services and Virtual Machines.

    • Library—Provides access to the App Controller library, where you can manage file shares, service templates and other resources that are required to deploy services and virtual machines to private and public clouds. For more information, see Using App Controller Library Resources.

    • Jobs—Provides access to a list of recent jobs, where you can view the status of tasks you have performed in App Controller. For more information, see Setting up App Controller.

    • Settings—Provides access to the Settings node, where you can manage configuration settings for private and public cloud connections, Windows Azure subscriptions, and App Controller users and user roles. Users and user roles defined in the Settings area are applicable only to Azure subscriptions. For more information, see Settings.

  • Header pane

    This pane is in the top section of the console. It displays a product logo, name of the currently logged in user, link to sign out and link to Help.

  • List view pane

    This pane is in the upper central section of the console. It displays a list of objects as appropriate for the selected item in the navigation pane.

  • Details pane

    This pane is located in the lower central section of the console and is displayed in conjunction with list view. This pane displays summary information of an object that has been selected in the list view pane, such as a deployed service.

  • Diagram view

    On the Services page and Virtual Machines page, use the Open Diagram task to view a diagram of a deployed service or virtual machine. A smaller version of the diagram is also displayed in the Details pane of a selected item.

  • Taskbar

    The taskbar is located directly below the header. The taskbar displays tasks and actions appropriate to items that have been selected in other pages.

  • Status bar

    The status bar is located directly below the list view pane or preview pane, and is displayed only when you perform a long-running task in App Controller, to let you know the status of the task. For more information about jobs in App Controller, see Setting up App Controller.

  • Footer

    The footer is located at the bottom of the browser window and includes a copyright statement and a link to provide feedback to Microsoft on your experience with App Controller.