Create a service instance

In this document we want to take a look on how you can create a service instance. With those services you can enrich your cloud experience with a persistence layer, a message queue or other useful tools. The Cloud Foundry makes this process especially easy with its integrated marketplace and service brokers. Here you will learn how to use them.

This is a First Steps Overview on the topic of services within the Cloud Foundry. You can get more detailed information in the service overview of the Cloud Foundry docs.

Do you want to try out STACKIT Cloud Foundry for the first time and don’t have a cloud-ready application prepared? In that case; use one of the sample applications provided by the Cloud Foundry open source community for this purpose: Cloud Foundry Sample Applications.

Via CLI

In this tab you will learn how to use the Cloud Foundry CLI to:

• Explore the marketplace
• Create a new service instance
• Delete a service instance

Explore the marketplace via CLI

You can create and bind data services to your application on the Cloud Foundry with the integrated Cloud Foundry Marketplace. For this you have to login via the Cloud Foundry Command Line Interface to your organization and space (see “Interact with Cloud Foundry”). Afterwards you can navigate to the marketplace via the command:

cf marketplace

Getting all service offerings from marketplace in org <ORG_NAME> / space <SPACE_NAME> as <USER_NAME>...
offering plans description broker
appcloud-redis40 redis-cluster-medium, redis-cluster-small, redis-single-small, redis-cluster-big, redis-single-medium This is a service creating and managing dedicated Redis service instances, powered by the anynines Service Framework a9s-redis
Cloud Foundry-logme logme-cluster-big, logme-cluster-medium, logme-cluster-small, logme-single-small, logme-single-medium Dedicated ELK stacks to monitor applications and service instances powered by the anynines Service Framework a9s-logme
...

You can get more details about the individual services and their service plans by adding the flag -e and the service name you want to know more about. For example:

cf marketplace -e appcloud-mysql101

Getting service plan information for service offering Cloud Foundry-mysql101 in org Cloud Foundry Demo / space dev as admin...
broker: a9s-mysql
 plan description free or paid costs available
 mysql-cluster-medium a medium replica set paid yes
 mysql-cluster-small a small replica set paid yes
 mysql-single-medium a medium single instance paid yes
 mysql-single-small a small single instance free yes
 mysql-cluster-big a large replica set paid yes

Here you can see the different service plans available for the data service. You can find the detailed information about sizes and numbers behind a service plan in the Service Descriptions of the individual service.

Create a new service instance via CLI

You can easily create a new service instance of a service through the Cloud Foundry CLI as well by just using the following command:

cf create-service SERVICE_NAME SERVICE_PLAN SERVICE_INSTANCE_NAME [-c PARAMETERS_AS_JSON] [-t TAGS]

Here you can select the type and plan of your service, as listed in the marketplace above and can name your service instance. The name of your service instance is the unique identifier of that instance within your space and therefore has to be unique in your space. All service instances you create over the cf CLI have to be assigned to a space, which you have to select earlier with the cf target command.

The instance creation is done asynchronously. After you have triggered the process you can get the state of your data service via the cf services command like in the following example:

cf services

Getting the services in organization MyFirstOrg / space dev as <USERNAME>...

Name Service Plan Bound Apps Last operation Broker upgrade available
mydb Cloud Foundry-postgresql11 postgresql-single-small create in progress a9s-postgresql

You can also get more details about a specific service by using the following command:

cf service <INSTANCE_NAME>

The output will give you more useful information like the description, dashboard URL, start and update dates and more.

After the asynchronous operation of the instance creation is done and it is in state create succeeded you can start working with the data service.

Delete a service instance via CLI

You can delete your service instances again if you no longer need them. You can do a deletion with the following command:

cf delete-service SERVICE_INSTANCE_NAME

Via Stratos (UI)

In this tab you will learn how to use the Stratos UI to:

• Explore the marketplace
• Create a new service instance
• Delete a service instance

Explore the marketplace via Stratos

In the Console UI you can find an overview of the existing services you can create instances from in the Marketplace Tab on the left side navigation. There you can see the available services listed with the description and other useful information in a panel list as seen in the image below.

Clicking on one of those panels will directly lead you to a more detailed view of the selected data service. Here you can also find the list existing instances or the available plans of the data service as seen in the image below in the Plans-Tab on the views left side navigation.

You can find the detailed information about sizes and numbers behind a service plan in the Service Descriptions of the individual service.

Create a new service instance via Stratos

You can easily create a new service instance in the service overview you can find in the service tab of the left side navigation. Here you can see your existing service instances or create new ones with pressing the ”+“-button on the top bar as marked in the image below.

Afterwards you will be asked, if you want to create an instance of a marketplace service or a user provided service. Marketplace services are all data services you can find in the platforms marketplace, as seen in the chapter above. User Provided Services are services you create and deploy on the Cloud Foundry on your own, like for example a routing service.

Since we want to create a data service in this example, you have to select the marketplace service by just clicking on the panel.

Now the instance creation process for marketplace services starts. As a first step you have to select the platform, your org and space you want that service instance to be available in.

If you already filtered the service overview to your org and space, this will already be selected for you. If not, please select the org and space from the dropdown selection as seen in the image below.

You need to have at least space developer rights for the space you want to create a service in.

In the next step you have to select the service you want to instanciate. You have the selection of available services in the dropdown menu. Select the one that you want to create. If you want to see more details about the services, you can checkout the marketplace as seen in the previous chapter for more information.

As a follow up you also have to select the service plan of the instance you want to create. A dropdown menu lists the options you can choose from. You can find more information about the available service plans directly below the selected option or in the service description of the dataservice of your choice.

Select the service plan that best suits your use case.

In the next step you can choose an application to directly bind your service instance too. This leads to the service instance connection credentials being directly after its creation injected to the applications environment variables.

This functionality does currently not work.

Our dataservice instance creation is asynchronous and the binding process of the Console UI here is expecting a synchronous response. Selecting your application to bind the service instance to will lead to an error message, that the binding did not work. Your service instance will still be created, but you have to follow the binding process in the next chapter anyways.

In the last step you have to select a name for your dataservice instance. This name is a unique identifier for your dataservice within your space. Additionally you can add tags or other arguments as a json object.

Press the Finish-Button to start the process of your instance creation. After this your instance will be created and you can see it in the service overview as seen in the image below.

Here you can get details of your application, like the current state - which is “Create” when still being created and “Create Successfull” when you can start working with it. You can also directly go to the service instance dashboard with a click on the marked link as seen on the image above.

Delete a service instance via Stratos

You can easily delete your dataservice instance in the Service Overview of the Console UI. Filter for the space your instance is created in and then select the context menu (three dots) in the panel of the service instance you want to delete. As seen in the image below.

If you want to delete the instance you have to type its name in the pop up confirmation. Afterwards the asnychronous deletion is started and you can no longer use it.