Creating IBM Multicloud Manager application resources

You can apply your YAML file to create the five application resources, which are defined as Application, Deployable, PlacementPolicy, DeployableOverride, or ApplicationRelationship.

Application resources are defined by community specifications from Kubernetes SIG Application CRD Opens in a new tab. Learn how to create your application resources.

  1. Choose from the following two processes to create your application resource:

  2. Compose and save your YAML file with any tool, then run the following to apply it to an api-server:

    kubectl apply -f <filename>

    You need a Helm chart to package all the YAML files for your application.

    • Replace the chart URL with a chart and update targetCluster with the cluster filter, this example can be used for any applications with only one Helm chart.

  3. Next, verify that you created your resource by running the following command:

    kubectl get <kind>

IBM Multicloud Manager specifications

Learn about the specifications for Deployable, DeployableOverride, and ApplicationRelationship. See Creating an IBM Multicloud Manager PlacementPolicy to deploy application resources to learn how to set up that resource.

Create a Deployable

You can define your deployment with the deployer specification, such as the helm kind, which is supported with the current version. Deploy helm with one of the following two choices:

  1. Update your .yaml with repository, chartName, version.
  2. Provide the chartURL directly.

You also need to specify values. Choose from one of the following procedures:

  1. Insert base64-encoded bytes into values.
  2. Provide a values URL for IBM Multicloud Manager to download.

You need to specify the namespace of the remote-cluster that you want to deploy to. See the following sample:

apiVersion: mcm.ibm.com/v1alpha1
kind: Deployable
metadata:
  name: trader
  labels:
    serviceKind: ApplicationService
    name: trader
    placementPolicy: "trader"
spec:
  deployer:
    kind: helm
    helm:
      repository: google
      chartName: nginx-lego
      chartVersion: 0.3.1

Create a DeployableOverride

You can deploy unique settings on different clusters, such as two different settings for a production and developer cluster with DeployableOverride. This specification contains multiple overrides, each of them with two members: clusterName and template.

apiVersion: mcm.ibm.com/v1alpha1
kind: DeployableOverride
metadata:
  name: trader
spec:
  overrides:
  - clustername: productioncluster
    namespace: default
    template:
        deployer:
          kind: helm
          helm:
            repository: production-repo
            chartName: app-chart
            chartVersion: 0.11.0
            values: somevalues
  - clustername: testcluster
    namespace: default
    template:
        deployer:
          kind: helm
          helm:
            repository: test-repo
            chartName: app-chart
            chartVersion: 0.11.0
            values: someothervalues

Create an ApplicationRelationship resource

You can define relationships among components inside Applications with ApplicationRelationship.

For this specification, the type is usesCreated. You also define source and destination, which consists of clustername, kind and name and namespace. See the following sample:

apiVersion: mcm.ibm.com/v1alpha1
kind: ApplicationRelationship
metadata:
    name: product-to-details
    labels:
      app: productpage
spec:
  type: usesCreated
  source:
    clustername: crucial-owl
    kind: Deployable
    name: product-app
    namespace: default
  destination:
    kind: Deployable
    name: details-app
    clustername: crucial-owl
    namespace: default

Create a local Helm repository

You can add Helm charts to the internal repository, which is provided by IBM Cloud Private. You can create an internal repository from kind: HelmRepo.

See the following specification, where kube-system is the targeted namespace, but the value can be any namespace that users are assigned to, and where local-charts is the name, but the value can be any repository name. The annotation must be set to true and you must add the spec.url:

apiVersion: mcm.ibm.com/v1alpha1
kind: HelmRepo
metadata:
  namespace: kube-system
  name: local-charts
  annotations:
      mcm.ibm.com/hub-cluster-repo: "true"
spec:
  url: https://<mycluster.icp>:8443/helm-repo/charts

See Create PlacementPolicy to deploy IBM Multicloud Manager application resources to deploy a PlacementPolicy application.

See Working with IBM Multicloud Manager applications for more application topics.