Daniel Watrous on Software Engineering

This post is an extension of Managed services in CloudFoundry and follows the discussion of external services integration. The echo service and python service broker implementation are deployed using the documented procedure for Stackato. If necessary, you can get a Stackato instance up and running quickly. The result should be two apps deployed as shown […]

This post builds on the discussion of Managed Services in CloudFoundry and covers the first of the two methods for using unmanaged services in CloudFoundry. It makes use of the Python echo service and Python service broker API implementation used previously. Manually provision the service This method assumes that an existing service has been provisioned […]

CloudFoundry defines a Service Broker API which can be implemented and added to a CloudFoundry installation to provide managed services for apps. In order to better understand the way managed services are created and integrated with CloudFoundry (and derivative technologies like Stackato and HP Helion Development Platform), I created an example service and implemented the […]

CloudFoundry, Stackato and Helion Development Platform accommodate (and encourage) external services for persistent application needs. The types of services include relational databases, like MySQL or PostgreSQL, NoSQL datastores, like MongoDB, messaging services like RabbitMQ and even cache technologies like Redis and Memcached. In each case, connection details, such as a URL, PORT and credentials, are […]

I have observed that discussions about CloudFoundry often lack accurate context. Some questions I get that indicate context is missing include: What Java version does CloudFoundry support? What database products/versions are available How can I access the server directly? There are a few reasons that the questions above are not relevant for CloudFoundry (or any […]

It’s possible to add a custom buildpack to Stackato or Helion Development Platform so that it’s available to all applications. When using an installed buildpack it is not necessary to include a manifest or identify the buildpack. Instead it will be selected by the detect script in the buildpack. All files are on the cloud […]

In the past PaaS has been rigid and invasive for application developers. CloudFoundry aims to change that perception of PaaS with the use of Buildpacks. A Buildpack allows an application developer to define his deployment environment in plain text. Some refer to this as infrastructure as code since the aspects of a deployment environment that […]

Previously I detailed the process to create a buildpack for Stackato or Helion, including reconfiguring the buildpack to be self-contained. In both previous examples, the compile script performed a configure and make on source to build the binaries for the application. Since the configure->make process is often slow, this can be done once and the […]

I previously documented the process to create a buildpack for nginx to use with Stackato or Helion Dev Platform. In that buildpack example, the compile script would download the nginx source using wget. In some cases, the time, bandwidth or access required to download external resources may be undesirable. In those cases the buildpack can […]

CloudFoundry accommodates buildpacks which define a deployment environment. A buildpack is distinct from an application and provides everything the application needs to run, including web server, language runtime, libraries, etc. The most basic structure for a buildpack requires three files inside a directory named bin. The buildpack files discussed in this post can be cloned […]