Cloud Foundry with Bluemix

Cloud Foundry is an open source Platform as a Service (PaaS) that lets you quickly create and deploy applications on the cloud.  (For those familiar with JEE, I like to think of it as a next generation application server with built-in multi-tenancy support for different languages and service bindings.)

As Cloud Foundry is open source and does not rely on proprietary software or cloud infrastructure, it is completely possible to set up a Cloud Foundry  client locally to experiment with Bluemix. That’s exactly what we will do later in this posting to get familiar with it.  There is nothing better than learning by doing.

Orgs, Spaces, Roles, and Permissions

Cloud Foundry is designed to support multiple developers in isolated spaces within orgs (organizations) to push applications into.

There is a user role within Cloud Foundry (OrgManager) that allows users to create orgs. When using Bluemix, this role is assigned to Bluemix administrators and, by default, the Bluemix user does not have permissions to create or delete them however the user is the administrator of the org itself, so it is possible to create/delete/modify spaces within it. By default, the name of the org is the user name. It is possible however to rename the org.

Every application and service is scoped to a space. A space provides a set of users access to a shared location for application development, deployment, and maintenance. Each org contains at least one space and it's called "dev", by default, in Bluemix.

Let's examine Bluemix with the Cloud Foundry client.:

1. Go to https://github.com/cloudfoundry/cli/releases and download and install the appropriate release for your platform.
2. It is now possible to type:
   
   

   cf help
   

   to get a full listing of possible commands and:
   
   

   cf <command> -h
   

   or:
   
   

   cf help <command>
   

   to get help on a specific commands.
3. Run the following command which sets the API endpoint, or target URL, of the Cloud Foundry instance's Cloud Controller URL. The Cloud provider, in this case, Bluemix, typically supplies this.
   
   

   > cf api https://api.ng.bluemix.net
   Setting api endpoint to https://api.ng.bluemix.net...
   OK
   
                      
   API endpoint:   https://api.ng.bluemix.net (API version: 2.23.0)   
   Not logged in. Use 'cf login' to log in. 
   

4. As suggested we will now login into Cloud Foundry. The "-u" option is the username.
   
   

   > cf login -u <Bluemix username>
   API endpoint: https://api.ng.bluemix.net
   
   Password> 
   Authenticating...
   OK
   
   Targeted org <Bluemix username>
   
   Targeted space dev
   
   
                      
   API endpoint:   https://api.ng.bluemix.net (API version: 2.23.0)   
   User:           <Bluemix username>   
   Org:            <Bluemix username>   
   Space:          dev

5. As mentioned previously, the default organization is the username with a default space called "dev". Let's rename the org to something more meaningful. For example

   > cf rename-org <Bluemix username> "Boris's Cloud Blog"
   Renaming org <Bluemix username> to Boris's Cloud Blog as <Bluemix username>...
   OK

If you login to Bluemix you will see that the org has been renamed on the Dashboard.

We'll also create a new space for our work.

1. Create a new space called "Cloud"

> cf create-space Cloud
Creating space Cloud in org Boris's Cloud Blog as <Bluemix username>...
OK
Assigning role SpaceManager to user <Bluemix username> in org Boris's Cloud Blog / space Cloud as <Bluemix username>...
OK
Assigning role SpaceDeveloper to user <Bluemix username> in org Boris's Cloud Blog / space Cloud as <Bluemix username>...
OK 

TIP: Use 'cf target -o Boris's Cloud Blog -s Cloud' to target new space 

 
2. Target the new space, this will now be used for applications

   > cf target -o "Boris's Cloud Blog" -s Cloud
                      
   API endpoint:   https://api.ng.bluemix.net (API version: 2.23.0)   
   User:           <Bluemix username>   
   Org:            Boris's Cloud Blog   
   Space:          Cloud  s

In Bluemix, this new space is also now available for deploying applications:

Components

Cloud Foundry consist of several components: routing, authentication, application lifecycle storage and execution, messaging (for inter-component communication), metrics, logging and service brokers that provides service instances when developers bind those services to applications. (Services can be provided using a SaaS model).

Developing and Deploying Applications

Applications can be built with different programming languages and technologies, Cloud Foundry has the concept of buildpacks that provide support for them. Let's see what buildpacks are available on IBM Bluemix.

> cf buildpacks

Getting buildpacks...

buildpack                            position enabled locked filename  

liberty-for-java                     1        true    false  buildpack_liberty-for-java_v1.19-20150608-1717-yp.zip
sdk-for-nodejs                       2        true    false  buildpack_sdk-for-nodejs_v2.0-20150608-1503-yp.zip
noop-buildpack                       3        true    false  noop-buildpack-20140311-1519.zip  
java_buildpack                       4        true    false  java-buildpack-v2.7.1.zip  
ruby_buildpack                       5        true    false  ruby_buildpack-cached-v1.3.0.zip  
nodejs_buildpack                     6        true    false  nodejs_buildpack-cached-v1.2.0.zip  
go_buildpack                         7        true    false  go_buildpack-cached-v1.2.0.zip  
python_buildpack                     8        true    false  python_buildpack-cached-v1.2.0.zip  
php_buildpack                        9        true    false  php_buildpack-offline-v3.1.0.zip  
aspnet5-experimental                 10       true    false  buildpack_aspnet5-experimental_v0.1.5-20150508-1205.zip
liberty-for-java_v1-18-20150519-1642 11       true    false  buildpack_liberty-for-java_v1.18-20150519-1642-yp.zip
sdk-for-nodejs_v1-18-20150519-1759   12       true    false  buildpack_sdk-for-nodejs_v1.18-20150519-1759-yp.zip  

Different buildpacks have different functionalities specific to the development technology support being provided. For example, the Java buildpack support includes support for Java Main,  Servlets, Spring Boot CLI and Play Framework. When "pushing" an app to Cloud Foundry, it will examine the contents to determine which build pack should be used. The buildpack can also be specified on the cf command line when pushing the application, this is how custom/community buildpacks can be used.

In the next blog entry, we'll create an app using the Java buildpack and deploy it to the new "Cloud" space we created.

For More information on these topics visit:

http://docs.cloudfoundry.org/devguide/
https://www.ng.bluemix.net/docs/starters/byob.html
https://github.com/cloudfoundry/java-buildpack