Frequently Asked Questions
Why is C3DNA called so?

C3 stands for Cognition, Computing and Communications. DNA is an acronym for Distributed Networked Applications the core of our technology and patents.
Cognitive computing and communications based on Distributed Networked Applications advances QoS by providing hyper-resiliency for yotta-scale workflows.

What does the double-helix image represent?

The two strands of the double helix represent the convergence of 1) Computing and application components defining business functions and 2) Communications between computing nodes. Cognition is captured by the "cogs' that connect the two intertwined strands.

Thus Cognition enables Autonomous Application Networks by bridging the two strands of Computing and application components defining business functions, and Communications between computing nodes.

What does C3DNA provide?

C3DNA provides application lifecycle management to enterprise private or hybrid clouds. Our breakthrough technology provides self-reliance and mobility to legacy as well as new enterprise applications. Applications are made highly scalable, resilient, infrastructure-agnostic, self-protecting, and efficient with C3DNA. Our software provides over 50% improvement in CAPEx and OPEx over current tools by eliminating the need to move and orchestrate virtual machine (VM) images across disparate infrastructures.

What are the various modules involved?
The C3DNA Cognitive Application Management Platform (CAMP) consists of three major components::

Infrastructure Control Plane Manger

Provisions all needed computing, network and storage infrastructures based on the resource blueprint using C3DNA distributed resource configuration API.

Service Control Plane Manager

Through its Cognitive Application Network Management tool, provides end-to-end application deployment, monitoring and run-time management services including distributed application configuration, monitoring, control, policy-based self-management, self-repair, recombination, reconfiguration, replication, auto-scaling, and live migration, all based on service design blueprint policies. C3DNA's unique strength is that its services span Day 0, Day 1 and beyond across the full application lifecycle, and are accessed via a single pane of glass, eliminating the fragmentation that plagues today's deployment and management tools and practices, and their associated downtime, CAPEx, OPEx, and security risks.

C3DNA Node Agents

C3DNA agents that provide cognition and automation to OS and run-time components.

What are the minimum hardware and software requirements for a typical deployment?
The deployment requirements are:

Infrastructure Control Plane Manager: VM/Server with 4 CPUs, 8 GB memory, 16GB storage

Service Control Plane Manager: VM/Server with 4 CPUs, 8 GB memory, 16 GB storage

Nodes: min 1 CPU, 4 GB memory, 8 GB storage

Why move to the cloud? How?

Legacy applications running in the cloud are tightly integrated with the underlying infrastructure, making it difficult, expensive, time-consuming, and error-prone to move them to the cloud or from one cloud to another. C3DNA overcomes these limitations by (i) easily coupling these applications to the infrastructure in a portable and infrastructure-agnostic way, (ii) providing full visibility and control for all the workloads, and enabling dynamic rule-based application self-repair, auto-scaling and live-migration. The application blueprint is provided to the C3DNA Cognitive Application Network Management software using simple English-like procedural languages such as JSON or YAML.

Can't we run legacy apps in the cloud by converting them to VM images?

You can, but it requires a combination of application re-architecture, integration with cloud-specific APIs, stacked provisioning starting from IaaS PaaS SaaS, and involves VM image motion lock, stock, and barrel and the implementation of new operational management tools.

How is C3DNA different?

C3DNA uses its patented technology of availability, compliance, and security agents, comprising (i) a signaling overlay network for application configuration, monitoring and control based on policies, and (ii) a soft-switch which logically separates application data switching and routing from the underlying infrastructure. Using a data path management above the operating system, the soft-switch allows a new class of data transaction services without impacting the application or the OS.

Can you explain these agents in more detail?

Part of C3DNA Cognitive Application Management Platform, these agents enable infrastructure-independent automation that abstracts application processes from the underlying infrastructure, thus making possible live application migration without disrupting service transactions using C3DNA's Distributed Cognitive Computing Architecture. Each application running as a native OS process or different run-time middleware that manages the application processes are configured, monitored and managed by C3DNA agents where the knowledge is provided as various methods that use the local operating system. Groups of applications are managed by upper level agents who have the knowledge of how to configure, monitor and control downstream workflows composed of application components based on policies.

What do these agents do?

They define a self-healing, self-managed element, domain, multi-domain, and enterprise infrastructure. Self-management is enabled by keeping a history of monitored and controlled transactions that one can go back to and review. Self-healing applications can be configured, monitored, and managed using self-knowledge and reasoning in their interactions with computing resources and environment. Higher level agents know down-stream component configuration, monitoring and control behaviors to deliver the service intent.

What kind of operational benefits can customers expect in a heterogeneous environment containing C3DNA and other clouds?

C3DNA technology provides end-to-end visibility and control of applications through a single pane which can help reduce operations costs significantly. As discussed previously, current methods involve expensive and laborious VM image motion, while C3DNA delivers application orchestration transparently across heterogeneous VM providers.

How well does C3DNA integrate with other solutions?

Working with a customer's existing cloud infrastructure, C3DNA can free enterprises from tight vendor lock-ins. The technology has been tested with most major private/public cloud providers/technologies.

How can a customer enable elastic HyperClouds with C3DNA and what are they?

HyperClouds is a cloud of clouds. Customers can work with their existing cloud infrastructure and C3DNA to painlessly migrate workloads as they need start with a private, on-premises cloud and move burst loads to the cloud during peak load periods, such as Black Friday or Cyber Monday. With C3DNA, all this can be done independent of proprietary cloud APIs. New clouds can be added and old ones deleted with ease using C3DNA's SDK and API kit.

How scalable is C3DNA?

C3DNA breakthrough technology is not bound by the limits of traditional CAP (Consistency, Availability, and Partition tolerance) theorem. C3DNA's HyperContainer-composed workflows are highly scalable

How does C3DNA horizontal scaling benefit enterprise customers?

C3DNA enables web-scale deploying IT at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional scaling.

What kind of DevOps benefits you can expect when using C3DNA?

Regardless of which DevOps approach an enterprise takes, C3DNA can help achieve full consistency with ease ensuring Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment, Continuous Operations, and Continuous Management across all environments.

What kind of policy-driven capabilities does C3DNA software enable?

C3DNA powerful policy engine allows full application visibility, lifecycle management, and QoS assurance by allowing users to define parameter- and behavior-based control and methods as policies.

How does C3DNA enhance Docker?

C3DNA technology can enhance containers (e. g., Dockers and LXC.) without the need for expensive container orchestration, registries, IP translations, shared infrastructure across distributed clouds and cloud providers and application re-writes.

How does C3DNA enhance OpenStack?

C3DNA can enhance OpenStack by adding PaaS functionality to OpenStack, making it resilient, and enabling live application migration without the need for VM image motion that OpenStack's competing products traditionally use. For example, C3DNA provides workload mobility (WMotion) across clouds using private or public network going beyond what VMware provides with VMotion (checkout videos MultiCloud Application Orchestration and Lifecycle Management and Content Management Solution)

What applications and databases are currently supported?
C3DNA currently supports Apache, JBoss, Tomcat, MySQL, PHP, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Docker, WordPress, Passenger, Exress, AnguarJS, NodeJS, WebLogic, ElasticSearch, Logstash, Kibana, FileBeat, Snort, Nginx, All Java programs, OS native com-piled programs e.g., C; C++; Python

Support for Nginx, WebSphere, Oracle, REDIS, Rabbit MQ, Apache MQ, Active MQ, Coherence, MemCache, Hadoop and HPC by end of 2017


Does C3DNA support workload portability and interoperability?

Yes. Workloads can be migrated live without service disruptions from Cloud A to Cloud B (lift and shift) with all their functional characteristics, e. g., configuration, state, and execution, fully preserved. This is portability. At the same time, data can still reside in Cloud A and the workload in Cloud B can access it. This is interoperability. C3DNA essentially offers 4 R's for Routing, Repair, Replicate, Recombine, and Reconfigure.

Can you outline steps for migrating applications to a cloud?
For OS-native applications, such as C++, Java, and Python, that are compiled to run on an OS, or runtime techstacks e.g. Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, PHP C3DNA offers a scout (an agent we deploy during the course of migration) that discovers various processes, obtains their profile (configuration, performance), and dependencies with other apps (socket connections, databases, files). Using this profile, we analyze groups of apps and make them location-transparent, if required, by changing configurations. We then create a blueprint for a distributed application group by defining how to configure, monitor, and control it at runtime. We use that blueprint to then replicate/migrate the application to their C3DNA powered destination.
What is your pricing model? Do you charge for a PoC?

Our pricing offers the fastest ROI of known alternatives. ROI. One C3DNA controller can be purchased to manage 100 nodes. Pricing thereafter is per node, per plugin, etc. In-house proof of concept projects and actual deployment can be achieved at a nominal cost, enabling CAPEx and OPEx reductions that return an ROI multiple within weeks.

What kind of cost savings can a typical customer expect when using C3DNA?

Cost savings can be significant in both Capex, through more efficient usage of resources and on-demand capacity provisioning, and OpEx, through reduction of tools and point solutions required for application configuration, monitoring, management, and orchestration.

Who is your closest competitor and what are your differentiators?

C3DNA does not have direct competitors. Alternative solutionstake the traditional infrastructure-centric approach for application lifecycle management and in the process tightly couple the application with the underlying infrastructure. C3DNA's technology provides application-level read/write switching and routing, resulting in Cognitive Application Area Networks. While other solutions move workloads within proprietary clouds from one location to another or via nested virtualization, C3DNA provides true portability, interoperability, manageability, reliability, availability and scalability, while ensuring security.

How do you provide security and compliance across clouds?

For an added license fee, this is provided by strictly enforcing security policies at every component that constitutes the application. PKI is implemented at the application level. Using policy-based routing, each write is tagged and encrypted and a decrypted for each read.