Getting Started with Tanzu Workloads ¶

This guide walks you through how to use the Tanzu CLI to deploy a workload from source code in a git repository to an unmanaged clusters.

Note: This guide is meant as an introduction to using the Application Toolkit package. For a complete usage guide please refer to the Application Toolkit Package Docs

Before You Begin ¶

Ensure you have a Dockerhub account.

Install Tanzu CLI ¶

The Tanzu CLI is used for interacting with Tanzu Community Edition including creating an application and creating a cluster.

Choose your operating system below for guidance on installation.

Create an Unmanaged Cluster ¶

1. Create a cluster with 80 and 443 ports exposed.

   tanzu unmanaged-cluster create app-demo -p 80:80 -p 443:443
   

   Note: Ensure you expose the ports as they will enable your applications to be accessible!

2. Wait for the cluster to initialize. You will see this at the end of the successful execution of the command.

   ✅ Cluster created
   
   🎮 kubectl context set to beepboop
   
   View available packages:
      tanzu package available list
   View running pods:
      kubectl get po -A
   Delete this cluster:
      tanzu unmanaged-cluster delete beepboop
   

   A container image larger than 1GB is used for running clusters. This may cause your first cluster to take significantly longer to bootstrap than subsequent clusters.

Set-up Credentials ¶

We will be creating a registry secret that will be provided to the Application Toolkit package to push and pull your application images from your registry.

1. Install secretgen-controller package for exporting your registry secret across all namespaces

   tanzu package install secretgen-controller --package-name secretgen-controller.community.tanzu.vmware.com --version 0.7.1 -n tkg-system
   

2. Create a registry secret registry-credentials using your Docker credentials

   tanzu secret registry add registry-credentials --server https://index.docker.io/v1/ --username REGISTRY_USERNAME --password REGISTRY_PASSWORD --export-to-all-namespaces
   

   where

   • REGISTRY_USER: the username for the Dockerhub account with write access
   • REGISTRY_PASS: the password for the same account. You can also use the --pasword-env-var, --password-file, or --password-stdin options to provide your password in case you have special characters in your password.

Note: For the purposes of this Getting Started Guide, please ensure the name of the registry secret remains registry-credentials.

Install Application Toolkit Package ¶

1. Verify if the Application Toolkit package is available to install.

   tanzu package available get app-toolkit.community.tanzu.vmware.com
   

   NAME:                 app-toolkit.community.tanzu.vmware.com
   DISPLAY-NAME:         App-Toolkit package for TCE
   SHORT-DESCRIPTION:    Kubernetes-native toolkit to support application lifecycle
   PACKAGE-PROVIDER:     VMware
   LONG-DESCRIPTION:     Meta-Package to install a set of TCE packages that help users to create, iterate and manage their applications
   MAINTAINERS:          [{Glenio Borges} {Kris Applegate} {Ryan Collins}]
   SUPPORT:              For help go to #tanzu-community-edition in the kubernetes slack workspace.
   CATEGORY:             [application lifecycle]
   

2. Create a app-toolkit-values.yaml, copy the below content file, and update the file with your Dockerhub account credentials.

   contour:
     envoy:
       service:
         type: ClusterIP
       hostPorts:
         enable: true
   
   knative_serving:
     domain:
       type: real
       name: 127-0-0-1.sslip.io
   
   kpack:
     kp_default_repository: index.docker.io/[YOUR_DOCKERHUB_USERNAME]/app-toolkit-install
     kp_default_repository_username: [YOUR_DOCKERHUB_USERNAME]
     kp_default_repository_password: [YOUR_DOCKERHUB_PASSWORD]
   
   cartographer_catalog:
     registry:
       server: index.docker.io
       repository: [YOUR_DOCKERHUB_USERNAME]
   

3. Install the Application Toolkit package.

   Application Toolkit package will install software required to create a running application from your source code.

   Application Toolkit will also prepare the default namespace so that you can start creating applications immediately. For preparing another namespace, please refer to the Prepare your Developer Namespace section.

   tanzu package install app-toolkit --package-name app-toolkit.community.tanzu.vmware.com --version 0.2.0 -f app-toolkit-values.yaml -n tanzu-package-repo-global
   

4. Verify the package is now installed.

   tanzu package installed list
   

   NAME          PACKAGE-NAME                             PACKAGE-VERSION  STATUS
   app-toolkit               app-toolkit.community.tanzu.vmware.com               0.2.0            Reconcile succeeded  tanzu-package-repo-global
   cartographer              cartographer.community.tanzu.vmware.com              0.3.0            Reconcile succeeded  tanzu-package-repo-global
   cartographer-catalog      cartographer-catalog.community.tanzu.vmware.com      0.3.0            Reconcile succeeded  tanzu-package-repo-global
   cert-manager              cert-manager.community.tanzu.vmware.com              1.6.1            Reconcile succeeded  tanzu-package-repo-global
   contour                   contour.community.tanzu.vmware.com                   1.20.1           Reconcile succeeded  tanzu-package-repo-global
   fluxcd-source-controller  fluxcd-source-controller.community.tanzu.vmware.com  0.21.2           Reconcile succeeded  tanzu-package-repo-global
   knative-serving           knative-serving.community.tanzu.vmware.com           1.0.0            Reconcile succeeded  tanzu-package-repo-global
   kpack                     kpack.community.tanzu.vmware.com                     0.5.2            Reconcile succeeded  tanzu-package-repo-global
   kpack-dependencies        kpack-dependencies.community.tanzu.vmware.com        0.0.9            Reconcile succeeded  tanzu-package-repo-global
   cni                       calico.community.tanzu.vmware.com                    3.22.1           Reconcile succeeded  tkg-system
   secretgen-controller      secretgen-controller.community.tanzu.vmware.com      0.7.1            Reconcile succeeded  tkg-system
   

Create a Tanzu Workload ¶

Now that you have created an unmanaged cluster, and installed the Application Toolkit package, you can create a workload from source code that runs on the app-demo unmanaged-cluster you created earlier.

1. We will use a sample git repo to demonstrate how to create a Tanzu workload from your source code using tanzu apps.

   For using your own repository, refer to step 4 in the Application Toolkit readme.

   tanzu apps workload create hello-world \
               --git-repo  https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/application-toolkit-sample-app \
               --git-branch main \
               --type web \
               --label app.kubernetes.io/part-of=hello-world \
               --yes \
               --tail \
               --namespace default
   

2. Watch the logs of the workload to see it build and deploy. You’ll know it’s complete when you see Workload "tanzu-simple-web-app" is ready

3. After the workload is built and running, you can get the URL of the workload by running the command below.

   tanzu apps workload get hello-world
   

4. You can then curl the URL using the below command

   curl http://hello-world.default.127-0-0-1.sslip.io`
   

   You will see the below output:

   Greetings from Application Toolkit in Tanzu Community Edition!
   

Next Steps ¶

• Application Toolkit readme