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Overview

The environments app is designed to make environment management simple for R&D teams. We support small-footprint TAS, normal TAS, TKGi and cf-deployment on GCP, as well as CF-for-K8s on AWS, for all of VMware.

R&D Only Features

For R&D teams, we have additional environment types:

Custom Environments

These environments are optimized for teams that need to make modifications to the IaaS components. Additionally, these are renewable every 7 days, forever. You will need to first create an environment, wait 1-2 hours, then you will be able to use the environment you created.

Shared Pool Environments

These environments are optimized for use in CI. You will not have direct access to the GCP project that the environment is running inside of. These environments have a default lifetime of 24 hours, and a maximum lifetime of 7 days. You can claim an environment from the shared pool at any time, and there is usually an environment waiting for you. There are a limited number of supported versions and deployment_types available in shared pools.

Private Pool Environments

These environments are also optimized for use in CI. They behave the same as the shared pool, but you will need to create the pool inside of your own GCP Project. Good use cases for private pools would be:

  • To test on deployment_types or versions that are not available in the shared pools.
  • To enable access to the GCP Project that is running the environment

A not-so-good use case for using private pools would be to create a pool which is already supported in shared pools, just so that you always have an environment for your testing. If you're not getting environments when you need them, please tell us. We try to have the pools filled when they are needed. Now head on down to our pools documentation for more information about our Private Pools.

Support Matrix

IaaS Deployment_type Supported in UI? Supported in API? Supported in Shared Pools? Supported in Private Pools?
GCP TAS Yes Yes Yes - n-2 to n+1 Yes
GCP TKGi Yes Yes No Yes (beta)
GCP cf-deployment No Yes Yes (beta) Yes (beta)

Common features

Check Status

You can check the status of your environment by viewing it in the app. These lists are linked from the footer of the home page: Pooled GCP Envs and Custom GCP envs. You can search for your environment by name to see: IN USE, INITIALIZING, or ERROR. Environment names are re-used, so if someone else's name is next to your environment - it's not yours any longer. If you do not see your environment in the list, it has been deleted. See below on the correct methods to renew your environment.

Renew

  • Custom GCP Environments:
    • For Custom TAS or TKGi environments on GCP, we require you to renew your environment at least once a week. This is so that VMware can ensure that the ~$400/week in IaaS spend is put to good use.
    • You can find information about how to renew your environment ahead of time in the "Access & Return" email for your environment.
  • Pooled GCP TAS Environments:
    • Pooled GCP TAS environments can be renewed one time, so they can be used for up to 7 days.
    • If you need an environment for longer than ~7 days, you should use a Custom Environment.

Destroy

  • Custom TAS on GCP and Custom TKGi on GCP:
    • You can destroy your environment via the URL in the "Access & Return" email for your environment.

Get metadata

  • To get the metadata for your environment, you can use the URL in the "Access & Return" email for your environment. The format of each metadata file is described here.

DNS

Cloud Foundry R&D shares a common site named 'cf-app.com' which is managed in AWS's route53. Anyone can use the credentials for AWS's Route53 in LastPass in the 'Shared-Opensource Common' folder labeled 'Dev DNS Management (AWS)' . Toolsmiths are not the owners of this shared resource.

GCP Requirements

TAS Deploys require the service account key to have Project - Editor role along with the following APIs enabled in the GCP Project: - Service Management - Identity and Access Management - Cloud Resource Manager - Cloud DNS - Compute Engine - The project has enough quota to create a TAS environment

TKGi Deploys require the service account key to have Project - Owner role along with all the APIs listed above for TAS.