Getting Started Guide for the UKCloud Portal Toggle navigation Improve this Doc

Show / Hide Table of Contents Getting Started Guide for the UKCloud Portal Overview The UKCloud Portal is the gateway to your UKCloud services. In the Portal, you can:

Raise and monitor support tickets

View information about your UKCloud for VMware service, including virtual machine (VM) information, backup reports and build history

Create compute services, virtual data centres (VDCs) and edge gateways within your UKCloud for VMware environment

Access VMware Cloud Director to work with your UKCloud for VMware environment, for example to create and manage VMs, build VDC networks or configure your firewall

Access the OpenStack Horizon dashboard to work with your UKCloud for OpenStack environment, for example to build your network infrastructure, set up access and security and launch instances

Access the Azure Stack Hub portal to manage your UKCloud for Microsoft Azure environment, for example to create VMs

View consumption information for your Cloud Storage service, reset secret keys and create new users

View major incident (MI) notifications relating to the UKCloud platform

View cyber security news

This Getting Started Guide provides an overview of the functionality available within the Portal.

Intended audience This Getting Started Guide is intended for any user with access to the Portal.

Note The options you can see and tasks you can perform within the Portal depend on the services available in your account and the permissions you've been granted by your Portal administrator.

Before you begin You should have received your Portal login credentials from your Portal administrator. If you're the Portal administrator, a member of the Service Delivery team will provide your login credentials.

The Portal works with Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox.

Logging in to the UKCloud Portal The first thing you need to do is log in.

Go to the appropriate URL, depending on the security domain in which your service is located:

Assured OFFICIAL: https://portal.ukcloud.com

Elevated OFFICIAL: Contact your Portal administrator, your Service Delivery Manager (or [email protected]), or UKCloud Support (call 01252 303 300 and select option 2)

On the log in page, enter your credentials and click Log in.

Tip If you've forgotten your password, click the Forgotten password? link to request a password reset.

If this is the first time you've logged in, use the temporary password you were given by your Portal administrator or the Service Delivery team. You'll be prompted to change this temporary password.

Note If you incorrectly enter your password three times, you'll be prompted to enter a captcha code until you successfully log in. If you incorrectly enter the captcha code or your password another three times, a seventh unsuccessful login attempt will result in your account being locked. You'll need to contact your Portal administrator to unlock your account.

If your Portal administrator has enabled two-factor authentication (2FA), you'll be prompted to enter a six digit code. Use your 2FA app to generate the code and enter it here. (If this is the first time you've logged in, you'll be prompted to set up 2FA; see How to set up two-factor authentication for a user account).

Getting to know the UKCloud Portal After you log in, you'll see the Portal Home page. A Portal page is made up of three main areas:

Toolbar

Navigation panel

Content area

Toolbar Each user account is associated with one or more customer accounts. Within the Portal, you can work within any customer account to which you have access. From the toolbar, you can switch between different customer accounts.

Note When you switch between accounts, you may be prompted to enter a 2FA code again if this additional security measure has been enabled by the Portal administrator of that account.

In the toolbar, you can also click your username to access the following options:

Notifications - List all Portal notifications. Unread notifications are displayed in bold. Click the View button next to a notification to see more details. When you've finished reading a notification, select the Notifications tab to return to the list. If you want to quickly mark all your unread notifications as read, click the Mark all as Read button at the top of the page.

Tip The number next to the Notifications menu option (and next to your username in the toolbar) shows how many unread notifications you have.

Update contact details - Change your name and telephone numbers, opt to have Portal notifications sent to your email address, or set a different email address to be used if you forget your password.

Change Password - Change your password or memorable word. We recommend that you change your password at least every 90 days (see How to reset your UKCloud Portal password or memorable word).

Note Your Portal administrator may have implemented a password expiration period; in which case, you'll be prompted to change your password after the specified number of days.

Two-Factor Auth - Set up two-factor authentication (2FA) for your user account (see How to set up two-factor authentication for a user account).

API - View the information you need to use the Cloud Director API (see How to access VMware Cloud Director through the Coud Director API).

Feedback - Send an email to UKCloud ([email protected]) with feedback on the Portal or any other aspect of your UKCloud experience.

Log out - Log out of the Portal.

Tip Click the UKCloud logo in the toolbar on any page to return to the Home page. If you hover your mouse over the UKCloud logo, a tooltip displays the current Portal version.

Navigation panel The Portal navigation panel provides access to all the functionality available in the Portal.

Note The options you can see in the navigation panel depend on your Portal permissions and the services associated with your account.

Home - Return to the Portal Home page. You can also return to the Home page by clicking the UKCloud icon in the toolbar.

Reports - Provides access to the following reports:

VMware Cloud Build History - Lists recent compute service, VDC and edge gateway builds initiated from the Portal and the Portal API (see the Getting Started Guide for UKCloud for VMware and How to build an edge gateway).

Backup Summary - Provides access to summary reports of Snapshot Protection status for each of the account's compute services (see How to manage Snapshot Protection for your VMs).

Settings - (Portal administrators only) Change various Portal settings, including key contacts, password expiration period, two factor authentication and IP address restrictions (see UKCloud Portal security settings).

Contacts - Lists the user accounts with access to the current customer account. You can view a list of all user accounts (All Contacts) or just those with administration permissions (Admin Contacts). Portal administrators can create new users, reset other users' passwords and change other users' Portal permissions (see Portal permissions).

VMware Cloud - Provides access to UKCloud for VMware compute services. Expand this option and then select the compute service with which you want to work (see the Getting Started Guide for UKCloud for VMware).

Oracle Cloud - Provides access to the Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) Cloud Control console for UKCloud for Oracle Software (see the Getting Started Guide for UKCloud for Oracle Software).

OpenStack Cloud - Provides access to the OpenStack Horizon dashboard for UKCloud for OpenStack (see the Getting Started Guide for UKCloud for OpenStack).

OpenShift - Provides information about UKCloud for Red Hat OpenShift (see the Getting Started Guide for UKCloud for Red Hat OpenShift).

Azure Cloud - Provides access to the Azure Stack Hub portal for UKCloud for Microsoft Azure (see the Getting Started Guide for UKCloud for Microsoft Azure).

Cloud Storage - View information about your Cloud Storage service, including secret keys and storage consumption (see the Getting Started Guide for Cloud Storage).

Monitoring - Provides access to:

Cyber Security News, where you can view general threat briefs and security news

Security Operations Service, which shows the number of logs processed against the UKCloud platform by our Security Operations Service

For more information, see Protective Monitoring from UKCloud.

Support - Provides access to:

The Knowledge Centre

My Calls (see How to use My Calls to raise and monitor support tickets)

Service status information (see Understanding the UKCloud Service Status page)

Tools - Provides access to:

Self-service creation of compute services (see Getting Started Guide for UKCloud for VMware).

The Zerto Self-Service Portal (ZSSP) where you can manage Journaling Protection, Disaster Recovery to the Cloud and Workload Migration to the Cloud (see How to perform a failover).

Communities - Access the UKCloud LinkedIn group, Content Hub and UKCloud repositories on GitHub.

Content area The content area displays the main content of the page. While the toolbar and navigation panel remain the same in most Portal pages, the content area changes depending on what task you're performing in the Portal. For example, the content area of the Home page contains a dashboard that provides quick access to various areas of the Portal, including notifications, My Calls and the Knowledge Centre.

Logging out of the UKCloud Portal When you've finished working in the Portal, we recommend that you log out to prevent unauthorised access.

Tip After 15 minutes of inactivity, you'll be automatically logged out.

In the toolbar, click your username.

From the menu, select Log out.

Using the UKCloud Portal API The Portal also provides an API to enable you to interact programmatically with your UKCloud environment. For example, you can use the Portal API to view information about the components of your environment and create compute services, VDCs and edge gateways.

The entry point URL for the Portal API is:

https://portal.skyscapecloud.com/api

For reference information about the various endpoints offered by the Portal API, see the UKCloud Portal API Reference Guide.

For more information about how to use the API, including examples showing how to use the API to create a VDC and edge gateway, see How to use the UKCloud Portal API.

Next steps In this Getting Started Guide, you've learned the basics about the Portal and the functionality it provides to help you interact with your UKCloud environment. For more details about a specific service, see the appropriate Getting Started Guide.

Related videos UKCloud Portal overview video

Creating support tickets in My Calls

Glossary This section provides a glossary of terms specific to the UKCloud Portal.

account Within the UKCloud VMware environment there are two types of account:

customer account - A collection of related compute services associated with a particular customer or partner.

user account - The account you use to log in to the Portal or authenticate with the Portal API. Your user account determines which customer accounts you have access to. Each user account can be associated with multiple customer accounts.

compute service A UKCloud for VMware top-level container within a customer account that includes a VMware Cloud Director organization and its VDCs, catalogs, users and resources.

Knowledge Centre UKCloud's repository of articles created in collaboration with subject matter experts to provide information about how to use our products and services.

My Calls A service where you can raise and monitor support tickets.

navigation panel An area on the left side of the Portal that provides access to Portal functionality.

toolbar An area along the top of the Portal that enables you to switch accounts, access notifications, change your password or contact details and log out of the Portal.

two-factor authentication (2FA) An optional second level of authentication to provide an additional layer of security for the Portal. Users are prompted to enter a one-time code generated by registered device, such as an iPhone or Android Phone.

Feedback If you find a problem with this article, click Improve this Doc to make the change yourself or raise an issue in GitHub. If you have an idea for how we could improve any of our services, send an email to [email protected].