There are many ways to integrate services with VMware Tanzu Application Service for VMs and Tanzu Operations Manager. The right way for each service depends on what the service does, and how your customer applications consume it. To determine the best way to integrate your service, you need a good understanding of TAS for VMs concepts such as applications, containers, services, brokers, and buildpacks.

Here is a collection of links to documentation for the most relevant concepts.

For a general overview of TAS for VMs, and the various ways to interact with it, use the following links:

  • TAS for VMs Overview provides high-level descriptions of internal functions performed by different TAS for VMs components.
  • Cloud Foundry Command Line Interface (cf CLI) links to topics that explain how to direct TAS for VMs deployment from your local command line.
  • Tanzu Operations Manager describes Tanzu Operations Manager and Installation Dashboard interfaces, where cloud operators view, install, configure, and deploy service tiles.
  • Apps Manager describes the Apps Manager interface, where app developers create and configure service instances and bind them to their apps.

Applications

Cloud Foundry is primarily a cloud-native application platform. To understand how to integrate your services with Cloud Foundry, you must understand how your customers are using the platform to develop, deploy, and operate their applications.

Services

Most value-add integrations are done by exposing your software to your applications as services. To understand the service concepts, and what a service integration looks like, refer to the following documentation:

  • Services explains how developers provision and use existing services in their apps.
  • Cloud Foundry service brokers and Tanzu Operations Manager Tiles briefly describes the two main elements of Tanzu Operations Manager service integration: the service broker API, which connects the service to TAS for VMs internally by taking commands from the Cloud Controller; and the tile, a packaged interface that cloud operators use to install and configure a service within Tanzu Operations Manager.
  • Custom Services explains how service authors package their service as a Managed Service that is available for use by operators and developers, and which runs locally on TAS for VMs rather than running remotely.

Buildpacks

When application code is deployed to Cloud Foundry, a language-specific buildpack processes it. Language buildpacks provide a convenient integration hook for any service that needs to inspect or embellish application code. Supplying buildpacks also provides a language-agnostic way to inject your code into the application container image.

  • Staging your apps in Cloud Foundry explains how TAS for VMs packages and deploys apps in containers with buildpacks so that they can run on multiple VMs interchangeably.
  • Language Buildpacks describes the language-specific buildpacks support TAS for VMs apps.
  • Custom Buildpacks describes how to use supply buildpacks to add dependencies or code without having to change (multiple) language-specific buildpacks.

Embedded agents

Some integrations can inject code into the application container. VMware refers to these injected components as “container-embedded agents.” Buildpacks provide a mechanism to inject components into the application container image, and the .profile.d directory provides a way to start agents before or alongside the customer application. See Resources for deploying your buildpacks.

Also see:

Nozzles

Loggregator, the VMware Tanzu Application Service logging system, has a feature named Firehose. The Firehose includes the combined stream of logs from all apps, plus metrics data components used by operators and administrators.

A nozzle takes this data and forwards it to an external logging and metrics solution.

See:

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