Working with Container Applications in Your VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal

You can use VMware Marketplace and Helm chart repositories as external source catalogs that are not backed by the local VMware Cloud Director storage for deployment of container application images.

A container application is a Helm chart application that you can deploy within a container, that encapsulates the application and all its dependencies, including libraries, frameworks, and configuration files, into a single, isolated environment.

Note: Content Hub does not support the deployment of Helm chart container applications that require the creation of resources at the Kubernetes cluster level.

You can see the revision history of your container applications. The revision history includes the version of the revision, state, when the revision was submitted, and so on.

Table 1. Revision states

In Draft	The deployment is paused and the manifest is in draft state.
Submitted	The revision is submitted for deployment.
Accepted	Successful deployment of a revision.
Rejected	Unsuccessful deployment of a revision.
Canceled	The Content Hub operator did not use the revision because a newer revision exists.

Deploy a Container Application Using Your VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal

Using the VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal, you can deploy Helm chart container applications imported from shared VMware Marketplace and Helm chart repository resources.

Prerequisites

• Verify that you have the Manage Container App, View Kubernetes Namespace, and View: VMWARE: KUBECLUSTEREXTENSION rights.
• Verify that you have permissions on the Kubernetes cluster. There are two permission levels:
  • Granted Full Control: VMWARE: CAPVCDCLUSTER right and FullControl ACL of the target Kubernetes cluster
  • Granted View: VMWARE: CAPVCDCLUSTER right, ReadOnly ACL of the target Kubernetes cluster, and ReadOnly ACL for the namespace

  See Manage the User Access to a Kubernetes Cluster in Your VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal and Manage the Namespace Access to a Kubernetes Cluster in Your VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal.

• Verify that the Kubernetes operator is installed. For information, see Install a Kubernetes Operator in Your VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal.
• Verify that the container application that you want to deploy is added to a catalog. For information, see Add an Application Image from an External Resource to a VMware Cloud Director Catalog.

Procedure

1. From the top navigation bar, click Applications, and select the Container Applications tab.
2. On the Container Applications page, click Launch New.
3. In the Search by name text box, enter the name for the container application and, from the drop down menu, select the application.
4. Enter the application name, version, and Kubernetes cluster in which you want to deploy the application, and namespace.
5. Accept the end user license agreement (EULA) by selecting the I accept and agree to the EULA terms check box.
   VMware Cloud Director provides an EULA link for each application image and respective version for which the EULA exists. You cannot complete the process without accepting the EULA.
6. (Optional) To customize the application resources allocated to the container application, click Show Advanced Settings and provide the new application resource values.
7. Click Launch Application.

Results

The deploy task appears in the Recent Tasks pane. If the operation completes successfully, on the card for the application, the status appears as Deployed. VMware Cloud Director deploys the container application as a Helm release within the selected namespace to the Kubernetes cluster.

If the deployment fails, on the card for the application, the status displays error message that you can use to remediate the issue.

What to do next

• To review the details for a specific application, on the card for the application, click the application name.
• If you are using a password-protected registry, to apply registry credentials to the container application see Create a Kubernetes Registry Credentials Entry in the VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal.

Update the Container Application Properties Using Your VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal

In VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal, you can update the container application properties and version for an existing container application.

For every updated version of the same container application, the revision number is incremented.

Prerequisites

• Verify that you have the Manage Container App, View: VMWARE: KUBECLUSTEREXTENSION, View:VMWare:CAPVCDCLUSTER, and View Kubernetes Namespace rights.
• Verify that you have at least the ReadOnly ACL of the target Kubernetes cluster and namespace.
• Verify that the Kubernetes operator is installed. For information, see Install a Kubernetes Operator in Your VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal.
• To update a container application version, first you must add the respective Helm chart version to the catalog. For information, see Add an Application Image from an External Resource to a VMware Cloud Director Catalog.

Procedure

1. From the top navigation bar, click Applications, and select the Container Applications tab.
2. On the application card, click the Actions drop-down menu and select Update.
3. To upgrade the container application, from the Version drop-down menu, select the version to which to upgrade.
4. Accept the end user license agreement (EULA) by selecting the I accept and agree to the EULA terms check box.
   VMware Cloud Director provides an EULA link for each application image and respective version for which the EULA exists. You cannot complete the process without accepting the EULA.
5. To update the application resources allocated to the container application, click the Installation Values tab and provide the new resource allocations.
6. Click Update.

What to do next

• You can monitor the status of the update in the Recent Tasks panel. For more information, see View Tasks in the VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal.
• If you are using a password-protected registry, to apply registry credentials to the container application see Create a Kubernetes Registry Credentials Entry in the VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal.

Roll Back a Deployed Container Application Using Your VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal

In the VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal, you can roll to a specific revision of a deployed container application back.

Prerequisites

• Verify that you have the Manage Container App, View: VMWARE: KUBECLUSTEREXTENSION, View:VMWARE:CAPVCDCLUSTER, and View Kubernetes Namespace rights.
• Verify that you have at least the ReadOnly ACL of the target Kubernetes cluster and namespace.
• Verify that the Kubernetes operator is installed. For information, see Install a Kubernetes Operator in Your VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal.

Procedure

1. From the top navigation bar, click Applications, and select the Container Applications tab.
2. On the application card, click the Actions drop-down menu and select Rollback.
3. From the Revision drop-down menu, select the revision to which you want to roll back.
   You can roll back only to revisions with Accepted revision status.
4. Accept the end user license agreement (EULA) by selecting the I accept and agree to the EULA terms check box.
   VMware Cloud Director provides an EULA link for each application image and respective version for which the EULA exists. You cannot complete the process without accepting the EULA.
5. Click Rollback.

What to do next

You can monitor the status of the task in the Recent Tasks panel. For more information, see View Tasks in the VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal.

Delete a Container Application from Your VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal

Using the VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal, you can delete a deployed container application.

Prerequisites

• Verify that you have the Manage Container App, View: VMWARE: KUBECLUSTEREXTENSION, View:VMWARE:CAPVCDCLUSTER, and View Kubernetes Namespace rights.
• Verify that you have at least the ReadOnly ACL of the target Kubernetes cluster and namespace.
• Verify that the Kubernetes operator is installed. For information, see Install a Kubernetes Operator in Your VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal.

Procedure

1. From the top navigation bar, click Applications, and select the Container Applications tab.
2. On the application card, click the Actions drop-down menu and select Delete.
3. Click Delete.

Results

You can monitor the status of the update in the Recent Tasks panel. For more information, see View Tasks in the VMware Cloud Director Tenant Portal.

After the operation completes, the container application is removed from the list of container applications.