App launchpad is one of the newest features that enhance the capabilities of VMware Cloud Director. This functionality will make life easier for tenants by allowing them to run applications with a few clicks.

In this post, I will walk through the steps of installing & configuring VMware App Launchpad. But before we dive into the lab, let’s understand the basics of App Launchpad.

VMware App Launchpad Introduction

App Launchpad is a VMware Cloud Director service extension that service providers can use to create and publish catalogs of deployment-ready applications. Tenant users can then deploy the applications with a single click.

• App Launchpad supports applications from the Bitnami applications catalog that is available in the VMware Cloud Marketplace. 
• You can create catalogs of your custom, in-house applications and configure App Launchpad to work with these catalogs.

App Launchpad Architecture

The below image taken from VMware documentation illustrates the high-level architecture of App Launchpad.

When App Launchpad is installed, it registers itself with Cloud Director as a plug-in. The service provider can then publish this plugin for providers and tenants. Once the plugin is published for tenants, they can access ALP from the tenant portal.

Download Link for ALP

App Launchpad can be downloaded from Here

Installation Prerequisites

Below is the list of prerequisites that you should meet before attempting to install ALP:

• Dedicated VM (Linux flavor) to install App Launchpad rpm.
• JDK 1.8 is installed on the machine where ALP will be installed.
• vCD 9.7, 10.x, or 10.1 instance ready.
• AMQP Broker (RMQ) installed and configured as an endpoint in vCD.
• A new exchange is created for ALP in RMQ
• A new user is created in vCD to be used as an ALP service account.

Please read VMware ALP’s official documentation for the installation checklist.

In my lab I already have RabbitMQ installed and configured in VCD.

 

I have a 3-node VCD deployment in my lab and I can see all nodes are talking to RMQ and are in a healthy state.

ALP Deployment Steps

I have selected Centos 7 as the OS to install the ALP software. After uploading the ALP rpm on the machine, run the command: rpm -ivh <rpm-name> to install the software.

Once rpm is installed, run the alp command and accept EULA by typing accept. 

Now you will see the supported options that can be used in conjunction with the alp command.

As mentioned in the installation prerequisites section, I have a dedicated exchange created for ALP as shown below. 

Also, a local user in VCD is to be used as an ALP service account.

Configure alp using the below command

Accept the certificate and verify the connectivity

Verify that the alp service has been started.

RMQ is talking with ALP service on port 50708

Login to VCD as a provider and verify you can see App Launchpad plugins listed under Customize Portal.

Make sure to publish the ALP plugin to both Tenants and SP.

ALP Setup

The service provider is responsible for configuring ALP service and publishing catalogs to tenants so that they can be consumed via self-service. 

To configure the service, click on App Launchpad from the main menu.

Click on the Launch Setup button to get started.

 

To get started select the “Yes, Set it up” option and hit next.

If you are unsure of what is gonna happen behind the scenes, you can click on the Learn More button to see a list of tasks that will be executed in the backend when the setup wizard is completed. 

Select the appropriate usage for App Launchpad and hit next. We have discussed this in the intro section.

Select a template that will be used by apps when published via ALP. You can create custom templates any time you want.

Hit finish to complete the setup wizard.

The ALP setup is now completed. It’s time to configure the catalog and publish some ready-to-use application templates.

Launch the tenant portal for the newly created “AppLaunchpad” org

Configure Catalog & Publish Application

Within AppLaunchpad Org, navigate to Libraries and create a new Catalog that can be published to tenants via ALP plugin.

You can import templates from Bitnami Marketplace or your in-house apps.

I have imported a Bitnami Cassandra template (downloaded from VMware MarketPlace) into my catalog. 

Now it’s time to publish this application/template to tenants for consumption.

Within the App Launchpad dashboard, navigate to Settings > Featured Applications and click on the Set Featured Applications button. 

 

Select the application from the list and click on Add.

I only have one as of now 🙂

It’s now visible under Applications. 

Now we will publish the Catalog to tenants. This is done under the Access Management tab by clicking on the Publish Catalog button.

Select the catalog to publish and hit Next.

Select the tenants to whom you want to provide access to this catalog and hit next.

Hit Publish to finish the wizard.

Using App Launchpad as Tenant

Login to Cloud Director as a tenant and navigate to the App Launchpad page from the context menu and under Applications Marketplace, you will see a newly published application ready for you.

You can deploy the application by clicking on the launch button and providing a name for your app and that’s it. Your application will be ready to be consumed within a couple of minutes.

Deploying applications was never so easy. Developers and DevOps folks gonna love this for sure. 

Troubleshooting Tip

Note: If your installation encountered any issues, you can always run the ALP diagnose command to check for issues in your setup. 

Video tutorials

Introducing VMware App Launchpad 1.0

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUQZ6Ezsa_g[/embedyt]

Cloud Director App Launchpad Demo

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwbL0kSP_gQ[/embedyt]

And that’s it for this post. 

I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Feel free to share this on social media if it is worth sharing 🙂