Automic Automation Cloud Integrations: Cloud Foundry Agent Integration

Broadcom's Cloud Foundry Automation Agent lets you easily execute Cloud Foundry jobs. In addition, it enables you monitor and manage jobs with your existing enterprise workload automation and perform other cloud-native activities. You instantly inherit the advanced capabilities of your enterprise solution, enabling you to deliver your digital transformation more quickly and successfully.

Video transcript

Introduction to the Cloud Foundry integration

Cloud Foundry is an open-source, multi-cloud platform as a service (PaaS) designed to help developers build, deploy, and scale containerized applications quickly. It supports several languages, including Java, Node, Go, and Python, while providing automated scaling and operational efficiency across various cloud providers.

Integrating Atomic Automation with Cloud Foundry allows users to:

• Run Cloud Foundry jobs directly from their Atomic Automation workspace.
• Identify integration components and understand the deployment sequence.
• Configure agents and design core object templates for connections and jobs.

The role of Automic Automation in orchestration

Atomic Automation acts as a central hub for orchestrating operations across multiple environments. By integrating with Cloud Foundry, the platform synchronizes cloud processes with non-cloud operations, allowing for centralized triggering, monitoring, and supervision.

Key benefits of this integration include:

• Delegated automation: Cloud Foundry's role is reduced to job execution, while Atomic Automation handles all scheduling and monitoring.
• Simplified operations: Users do not need to log in to Cloud Foundry manually to refresh or check statuses.
• Intuitive interfaces: Native dashboard tools provide drag-and-drop workflows, color-coded statuses, and right-click access to logs.
• Broad synchronization: Cloud workloads can be integrated with database packages, system backups, file transfers, and web services.

Integration architecture and object templates

A standard architecture for this integration involves two primary systems: the Atomic Automation host and a dedicated system for the agent. The agent is configured using a simple INI file. Once the agent is started and connects to the engine, it adds two new objects to the repository:

• Connection objects: Used to store the Cloud Foundry endpoint and login credentials.
• Job templates: Designed to trigger specific Cloud Foundry processes.

To manage multiple Cloud Foundry instances, users simply duplicate the connection template for each environment and create corresponding jobs that reference those specific connections.

Deployment and agent configuration

Deploying the integration follows a specific sequence to ensure the agent communicates correctly with the automation engine.

The installation process

• Download the integration package from the marketplace.
• Unzip the package to access the agent, INI configuration files, and start commands.
• Locate the UCXJCITX configuration file within the agent/cloudfoundry/bin directory.

Mandatory INI configurations

The agent requires at least four values to be updated in the INI file:

• Agent name: The unique identifier for the agent.
• Atomic system: The name of the automation engine system.
• JCP connection and TLS port: Connection details for the Java Communication Process.
• TLS certificate: The directory path containing the necessary security certificate.

Once configured, the agent is started by invoking the JAR file via a Java command, which then deploys the necessary object templates to the engine.

Supported Cloud Foundry job types

The integration supports several job types to manage application lifecycles and resource allocation:

• Start app jobs: Launch and run pre-staged container instances on Diego cells.
• Stop app jobs: Terminate application instances to free up resources while preserving data routes.
• Create task jobs: Execute one-off commands, such as database migrations or batch processing, in isolated containers.
• Scale app jobs: Adjust resources through horizontal instance scaling or vertical memory and disk adjustments.

Demonstration: Creating connections and jobs

The demonstration walkthrough covers the setup of connection and job objects to automate Cloud Foundry transitions.

Configuring the connection object

To identify the environment, users must fill out the base URL and select an authentication type:

• Client credentials: Requires a username, password, client ID, and client secret.
• Token: Uses a specific authentication token for the API.
• Token from file: References a path on the agent machine where a token is stored.
• Proxy settings: Optional fields for host name, port, and credentials if a proxy is used.

Setting up a start app job

After selecting the appropriate agent, the user configures the job by defining:

• Connection: The previously created connection object.
• Organization and space: Specific Cloud Foundry environments (selectable via a picker field).
• Application name: The target application to be started.
• Intervals: Custom sleep and failure intervals (e.g., 1 second) to control polling frequency.

Monitoring and reporting

Once the job is executed, users can monitor progress through the executions view:

• Remote status: Tracks the real-time status of the job in the target environment.
• Run ID: Provides a unique identifier for further analysis.
• Reports: A structured JSON output provides execution details, including the application’s GUID.
• Agent logs: The "P log" shows step-by-step agent actions and responses received from the target system.

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