Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu on VMC on AWS
Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu will help customers to modernize there existing applications. I read that it’s released as preview for VMC on AWS and thought to try this out for self learning purpose and help you to provide the step by step instructions on it.
In this post, i will discuss the deployment and configuration of this product and also containerize one of the sample java application running on tomcat server.
To know more about Application Transformer, here are some good articles:
Here is the product download link
Let’s start the installation procedure of Application Transformer for VMC on AWS.
Steps to Install Application Transformer for VMC on AWS
- Download the Application Transformer from the link here
- Login to VCenter, and click on an appropriate resource pool to deploy ovaf file
3. Select the OVF template from local file
4. Click on upload files, select the ovf file and click on next
5. Select an appropriate DC and click on next
6. Select the Cluster and click on next
7. Accept an ELA and click on next
8. Select the Storage
9. Select the Network
10. Customize template by passing on required parameters like DNS, NTP, username, password etc as shown in below screenshot
11. Review the provided details and click on Finish
12. Monitor the progress until completion.
13. On vCenter, if you will see the console of VM, it will also report the completion
14. So, now the OVF is deployed and once successful, you can access the Application Transformer UI. type the IP address/FQDN of the VM you provided during installation and hit enter. You will see the following page.
15. Enter the username and password provided during installation and click on Login.
16. Skip for now or select options and click submit
17. Now, we are going to configure the Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu.
Configuration Steps of Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu
In the following steps, lets talk about configuration steps of Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu.
- Click on Add vCenter under Discover tile.
2. Click on Add vCenter button and fill the details.
3. Click on SAVE. Note: automatically scan vCenter is an option piece and i tried without checking it. You can try and it will take sometime to scan the workload available on vCenter.
4. If you see in above screenshot, vRNI is not connected and i have not installed it. It adds value because it can discover the relationship between applications. In my case, i have sample application on one server and hence i have not tried vRNI.
5. Now, Lets scan one of the folder in vCenter for a quick result.
6. Check the progress and wait for completion.
7. Click on Virtual Machine section
8. Select the VM and Click on Change credentials button
9. Add new credentials
10. Fill the username, password and click on SAVE
11. Select the VM again and Click on Introspect
12. Monitor the progress and wait for completion.
So, We are now done with the configuration. Now, we will install Tomcat server and deploy sample application and then containerize it using Application Transformer.
Below, you will learn about how to use Application Transformer for application containerization.
Using Application Transformer for VMware Tanzu to containerize Java application
Note: You can follow below doc. to setup Tomcat server on ubuntu.
https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-install-tomcat-9-on-ubuntu-18-04/
Here is the sample Java application i used to deploy on Tomcat.
Once your application is deployed on tomcat, access it using browser
Now, lets containerize it using Application Transformer.
- Go to Virtual Machine section on Application Transformer GUI and select the VM where you have installed tomcat and deployed java application. Make sure that the credentials are associated with that VM.
- Click on Introspect, wait for it to get completed.
- Once introspection is done, Select the application again and you will see the tomcat is discovered.
4. You will see that it is ready to containerize. Click on Discover button below and wait for Discovery process to get completed.
5. Once discovery is completed, you will see the Containerize option highlighted.
6. Once you click on containerize, it will show you an options to fill the details
7. We can bring our tomcat and JRE artifacts or leave it to get pulled from internet. In my case, i clicked on Continue.
Select an Image registry, you can use embedded harbor registry or add new registry. I added new one , my dockerhub. To add a new registry
Go to Settings -> Registry -> ADD REGISTRY
8. Go back to previous step and select the image registry, Click on Continue.
9. Click on Confirm button after review.
10. It will start build image task. Wait for it’s completion.
11. you will also see push image task.
12. And, you will see will see that your sample application is now containerize.
13. Now, lets validate the image on registry and the generated artifacts.
and you can see the image artifact link in step 12. Click on it and it will download a zip file, once you extract, you will see the dockerfile, yaml file etc.
14. Now you can modify the Deployment yaml file and deploy on a TKG cluster. By default, it looks like below.
update the FIX ME sections and then you can apply this file using kubectl create -f Deployment.yaml
15. And you have containerize the java app now and its running on your TKG cluster.
Note: This is just for product demonstration purpose, you can have edit in Dockerfile, more fine grained Deployment yaml e.g. limits, requests etc. So modify as per your need. Hopefully you have enjoyed reading this as i enjoyed writing this for you :)
