Provider plug-in interface specification

A cloud provider plug-in must implement the following environment variables and interfaces to hook up with host factory for provisioning hosts and returning hosts to a cloud provider.

Environment variables

The following environment variables are specific to the provider plug-ins of the host factory framework:
HF_PROVIDER_NAME
Required. A unique name of the provider instance. The providername that is defined as a part of the directory path in the following optional environment variables.
HF_PROVIDER_CONFDIR
Optional. Absolute path of the provider configuration directory, which by default is:
  • %HF_CONFDIR%\providers\providername\ on Windows
  • $HF_CONFDIR/providers/providername/ on Linux®
HF_PROVIDER_WORKDIR
Optional. Absolute path of the provider work directory, which by default is:
  • %HF_WORKDIR%\providers\providername\ on Windows
  • $HF_WORKDIR/providers/providername/ on Linux
HF_PROVIDER_LOGDIR
Optional: Absolute path of the provider log directory, which by default is:
  • %HF_LOGDIR%/ on Windows
  • $HF_LOGDIR/ on Linux

The HF_CONFDIR, HF_WORKDIR, and HF_LOGDIR environment variables are defined in the hostfactory.xml file. For more information, see hostfactory.xml reference.

Interface

Use the following references to familiarize yourself with the specifications for these interfaces: getAvailableTemplates, requestMachines, requestReturnMachines, getRequestStatus, and getReturnRequests.