VMware Cloud Director App Launchpad allows users to deploy applications from public and private registries very easily into their VCD clouds, either as virtual machines or as containers into Kubernetes clusters provisioned into VCD by Container Service Extension.
The official documentation is here.
Here are a few screenshots of ALP in action in VCD.
How is App Launchpad Installed in a VM?
Installing ALP requires a Linux system, followed by installing the application from an RPM file and then going through some configuration commands to connect ALP to the VCD system. Tedious at best and prone to errors.
This post shows how you can run ALP as a Kubernetes pod in a Kubernetes cluster instead of running ALP in a VM.
Disclaimer: This is unsupported. This post is an example of how you can run App Launchpad in Kubernetes instead of deploying it on a traditional VM. Use at your own risk. Please continue to run ALP in supported configurations in production environments.
VMs vs Containers
Running containers in Kubernetes instead of VMs provides enhanced benefits. Such as:
- Containers are more lightweight than VMs, as their images are measured in megabytes rather than gigabytes
- Containers require fewer IT resources to deploy, run, and manage
- Containers spin up in milliseconds
- Since their order of magnitude is smaller, a single system can host many more containers as compared to VMs
- Containers are easier to deploy and fit in well with infrastructure as code concepts
- Developing, testing, running and managing applications are easier and more efficient with containers.
A short list, you can of course read more here.
Running App Launchpad in a Kubernetes cluster
What have I done to ALP to make it work as a container running in a Kubernetes cluster?
- Built a Docker image containing the docker photon image and installed all the pre-requisites to run ALP.
- Built a Helm chart to easily deploy ALP into any Kubernetes cluster.
What does the Helm chart look like?
There are three main files in the Helm chart that makes this work.
| File | Purpose |
| values.yaml | Holds the configuration information which can be changed by the user, such as parameters for the VCD system that ALP with connect to. |
| deployment.yaml | Kubernetes deployment that uses the other two files to deploy the ALP application in to Kubernetes. |
| configmap.yaml | Contains the run-alp.sh script that will install and configure ALP using the parameters in the values.yaml file. |
You can find the Helm chart on my Github repo here.
How to deploy ALP into Kubernetes?
Pull the Helm chart from my registry
helm pull oci://harbor.vmwire.com/library/app-launchpadExtract it to your local directory
tar zxvf app-launchpad-0.4.0.tgz
You’ll find the values.yaml file in the /app-launchpad directory. Edit it to your liking and also accept the ALP EULA, you’ll also find the EULA in the README.md file.
alpConnect:
saUser: "svc-alp"
saPass: Vmware1!
url: https://vcd.vmwire.com
adminUser: administrator@system
adminPass: Vmware1!
mqtt: true
eula: accept
# If you accept the EULA then type "accept" in the EULA key value to install ALP.
You can either package the chart and place it into your own registry or just use mine.
To install the chart, run
kubectl create ns app-launchpad
helm install app-launchpad oci://harbor.vmwire.com/library/app-launchpad -n app-launchpad -f /home/alp/app-launchpad/values.yamlYou’ll see output like this
values.yaml
NAME: app-launchpad
LAST DEPLOYED: Fri Mar 18 09:54:16 2022
NAMESPACE: app-launchpad
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
TEST SUITE: None
Running the following command will show that the deployment is successful
helm list -n app-launchpad
NAME NAMESPACE REVISION UPDATED STATUS CHART APP VERSION
app-launchpad app-launchpad 1 2022-03-18 09:54:16.560871812 +0000 UTC deployed app-launchpad-0.4.0 2.1.1
Running the following commands you’ll see that the pod has started
kubectl get deploy -n app-launchpad
NAME READY UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE
app-launchpad 1/1 1 1 25m
kubectl get po -n app-launchpad
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
app-launchpad-669786b6dd-p8fjw 1/1 Running 0 25m
Getting the logs you’ll see something like
kubectl logs app-launchpad-669786b6dd-p8fjw -n app-launchpad
Uninstalling...
Removed /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/alp.service.
Removed /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/alp-deployer.service.
System has not been booted with systemd as init system (PID 1). Can't operate.
Failed to connect to bus: Host is down
System has not been booted with systemd as init system (PID 1). Can't operate.
Failed to connect to bus: Host is down
warning: %postun(vmware-alp-2.1.1-19234432.x86_64) scriptlet failed, exit status 1
warning: /home/vmware-alp-2.1.1-19234432.ph3.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 RSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID 001e5cc9: NOKEY
Verifying... ########################################
Preparing... ########################################
Updating / installing...
vmware-alp-2.1.1-19234432 ########################################
New installing...
Found the /opt/vmware/alp/log, change log directory owner and permission ...
chmod: /opt/vmware/alp/log/*: No such file or directory
chown: /opt/vmware/alp/log/*: No such file or directory
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/alp.service → /lib/systemd/system/alp.service.
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/alp-deployer.service → /lib/systemd/system/alp-deployer.service.
Setup ALP connections
VMWARE END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
Last updated: 03 May 2021
--- snipped ---
Cloud Director Setting for App Launchpad
+--------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| Cloud Director URL | https://vcd.vmwire.com |
| App Launchpad Service Account | svc-alp |
| App Launchpad Service Password | Vmware1! |
| MQTT Triplet | VMware/AppLaunchpad/1.0.0 |
| MQTT Token | e089774e-389c-4e12-82d0-11378a30981d |
| MQTT Topic of Monitor | topic/extension/VMware/AppLaunchpad/1.0.0/ext |
| MQTT Topic of Response | topic/extension/VMware/AppLaunchpad/1.0.0/vcd |
| App Launchpad extension UUID | 9ba4f6c8-a1e4-3a57-bd4c-e5ca5c2f8375 |
+--------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
Successfully connected and configured with Cloud Director for App Launchpad.
start ALP Deployer service
Start ALP service
==> /opt/vmware/alp/deployer/log/deployer/default.log <==
{"level":"info","timestamp":"2022-03-18T09:54:24.446Z","caller":"cmd/deployer.go:68","msg":"Starting server","Config":{"ALP":{"System":{"Deployer":{"AuthToken":"***"}},"VCDEndpoint":{"URL":"https://vcd.vmwire.com","FingerprintsSHA256":"f4:e0:1b:7c:9c:d2:da:15:94:52:58:6f:80:02:2a:46:8f:ab:a5:91:d7:43:f6:8b:85:60:23:16:93:8b:2a:87"},"Deployer":{"Host":"127.0.0.1","Port":8087,"KubeRESTClient":{"QPS":256,"Burst":512,"Timeout":180000,"CertificateValidation":false},"ChartCacheSize":128}},"Logging":{"Stdout":false,"File":{"Path":"log/deployer/"},"Level":{"Com":{"VMware":{"ALP":"INFO"}}}}}}
{"level":"info","timestamp":"2022-03-18T09:54:24.550Z","caller":"server/manager.go:59","msg":"The manager is starting mux-router"}
__ __ __ __ __ __ _ ____ _____ _ _ ____
\ \ / / | \/ | \ \ / / / \ | _ \ | ____| / \ | | | _ \
\ \ / / | |\/| | \ \ /\ / / / _ \ | |_) | | _| / _ \ | | | |_) |
\ V / | | | | \ V V / / ___ \ | _ < | |___ / ___ \ | |___ | __/
\_/ 
\_/\_/ /_/ \_\ \_\ |_____| /_/ \_\ |_____|
:: Spring Boot Version : 2.4.13
:: VMware vCloud Director App LaunchPad Version : 2.1.1-19234432, Build Date: Thu Jan 20 02:18:37 GMT 2022
=================================================================================================================
What next?
It will take around two minutes until ALP is ready.
Open the VCD provider portal and click on the More menu to open up App Launchpad.
From here you can configure App Launchpad and enjoy using the app in a container running in a Kubernetes cluster.
Some other details
You’ll notice (if you deployed Kubernetes Dashboard), that the pod uses minimal resources after it has started and settled down to an idle state.
Using pretty much no CPU and around 300Mb of memory. This is so much better than running this thing in a VM right?
Note that I have used MQTT for the message bus between ALP and VCD. If you use RabbitMQ, you can in fact deploy multiple pods of ALP and enable Kubernetes to run ALP as a clustered service. MQTT does not support multiple instances of ALP.
Just change the replicaCount value from 1 to 2, and also edit the configMap to change from MQTT to RabbitMQ.
To finish off
I’ve found that moving my lab applications such as ALP and Container Service Extension to Kubernetes has freed up a lot of memory and CPU. This is the main use case for me as I run a lot of labs and demo environments. It is also just a lot easier to deploy these applications with Helm into Kubernetes than using virtual machines.
This is just one example of modernizing some of the VCPP applications to take advantage of the benefits of running in Kubernetes.
I hope this helps you too. Feel free to comment below if you find this useful. I am also working on improving my Container Service Extension Helm chart and will publish that when it is ready.
VMwire 
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