VMware's Cloud Application Platform

Copyright (c) 2009-2011 VMware, Inc.

What is Cloud Foundry?

Cloud Foundry is an open platform-as-a-service (PaaS). The system supports multiple frameworks, multiple application infrastructure services and deployment to multiple clouds.

License

Cloud Foundry uses the Apache 2 license. See LICENSE for details.

Installation Notes

Cloud Foundry is made up of a number of system components (cloud controller, health manager, dea, router, etc.). These components can run co-located in a single vm/single os or can be spread across several machines/vm's.

For development purposes, the preferred environment is to run all of the core components within a single vm and then interact with the system from outside of the vm via an ssh tunnel. The pre-defined domain *.vcap.me maps to local host, so when you use this setup, the end result is that your development environment is available at http://api.vcap.me.

For large scale or multi-vm deployments, the system is flexible enough to allow you to place system components on multiple vm's, run multiple nodes of a given type (e.g., 8 routers, 4 cloud controllers, etc.)

The detailed install instructions below walk you through the install process for a single vm installation.

Versions of these instructions have been used for production deployments, and for our own development purposes. many of us develop on mac laptops, so some additional instructions for this environment have been included.

Detailed Install/Run Instructions:

There are two methods for installing VCAP. One is a manual process, which you might choose to do if you want to understand the details of what goes into a bringing up a VCAP instance. The other is an automated process contributed by the community. In both cases, you need to start with a stock Ubuntu server VM.

Step 1: create a pristine VM with ssh

• setup a VM with a pristine Ubuntu 10.04.2 server 64bit image, download here
• you may wish to snapshot your VM now in case things go pear shaped.
• setup your VM with 1G or more of memory
• great snapshot spots are here and after step 4
• to enable remote access (more fun than using the console), install ssh.

To install ssh:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

Step 2: run the automated setup process

Run the install script. It'll ask for your sudo password at the beginning and towards the end. The entire process takes ~1 hour, so just keep a loose eye on it.

 sudo apt-get install curl
 bash < <(curl -s -k -B https://raw.github.com/cloudfoundry/vcap/master/setup/install)

NOTE: The automated setup does not auto-start the system. Once you are done with the setup, exit your current shell, restart a new shell and continue the following steps

Step 3: start the system

cd ~/cloudfoundry/vcap
bin/vcap start
bin/vcap tail  # see aggregate logs

Step 4: Optional, mac/linux users only, create a local ssh tunnel

From your VM, run ifconfig and note your eth0 IP address, which will look something like: 192.168.252.130

Now go to your mac terminal window and verify that you can connect with SSH:

ssh <your VM user>@<VM IP address>

If this works, create a local port 80 tunnel:

sudo ssh -L <local-port>:<VM IP address>:80 <your VM user>@<VM IP address> -N

If you are not already running a local web server, use port 80 as your local port, otherwise you may want to use 8080 or another common http port.

Once you do this, from both your mac, and from within the vm, api.vcap.me and *.vcap.me will map to localhost which will map to your running Cloud Foundry instance.

Trying your setup

Step 5: validate that you can connect and tests pass

From the console of your vm, or from your mac (thanks to local tunnel)

vmc target api.vcap.me
vmc info

Note: If you are using a tunnel and selected a local port other than 80 you will need to modify the target to include it here, like api.vcap.me:8080.

This should produce roughly the following:

VMware's Cloud Application Platform
For support visit [email protected]

Target:   http://api.vcap.me (v0.999)
Client:   v0.3.10

Play around as a user, start with:

vmc register --email [email protected] --passwd password
vmc login --email [email protected] --passwd password

To see what else you can do try:

vmc help

Testing your setup

Once the system is installed, you can run the following command Basic System Validation Tests (BVT) to ensure that major functionality is working.

cd cloudfoundry/vcap
cd tests && bundle package; bundle install && cd ..
rake tests

Unit tests can also be run using the following.

cd cloud_controller
rake spec
cd ../dea
rake spec
cd ../router
rake spec
cd ../health_manager
rake spec

Step 6: you are done, make sure you can run a simple hello world app.

Create an empty directory for your test app (lets call it env), and enter it.

mkdir env && cd env

Cut and paste the following app into a ruby file (lets say env.rb):

require 'rubygems'
require 'sinatra'

get '/' do
  host = ENV['VMC_APP_HOST']
  port = ENV['VMC_APP_PORT']
  "<h1>XXXXX Hello from the Cloud! via: #{host}:#{port}</h1>"
end

get '/env' do
  res = ''
  ENV.each do |k, v|
    res << "#{k}: #{v}<br/>"
  end
  res
end

Create & push a 4 instance version of the test app, like so:

vmc push env --instances 4 --mem 64M --url env.vcap.me -n

Test it in the browser:

http://env.vcap.me

Note that hitting refresh will show a different port in each refresh reflecting the different active instances

Check the status of your app by running:

vmc apps

Which should yield the following output:

+-------------+----+---------+-------------+----------+
| Application | #  | Health  | URLS        | Services |
+-------------+----+---------+-------------+----------+
| env         | 1  | RUNNING | env.vcap.me |          |
+-------------+----+---------+-------------+----------+