Managing applications with the console

You can use the IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management console to create, manage, view details, and troubleshoot application and hybrid application resources, including applications, deployables, hybrid deployables, subscriptions, placement rules, and channels.

The console includes different tools that each provide different application management capabilities. These capabilities allow you to easily create, find, update, deploy, and monitor applications resources.

• Overview page
• Application dashboards
• Search

You can also use the Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management UI to create and manage non-hybrid application resources, for more information, see the Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management documentation for Managing applications with the console .

Overview page

On the Overview page for the console (Observe environments > Overview), you can view at a glance high-level details for your available applications. The Overview dashboard is continuously refreshed in real time to update the included summary cards. From the summary cards on this page, you can view the following information:

• The chart-based Applications summary card provides you with a visual breakdown of your total number of applications and a breakdown of the application types.

• The list-based Applications summary card within the _Applications section lists your applications, associated providers, the number of associated deployables, and the application creation date.

  You can select an application to open the Applications dashboard and view the application topology, more details, and manage the application. You can also select View all to open the Applications dashboard to view details and manage all applications.

• The list-based Virtual machine services card within the _Applications section lists data from Infrastructure management when a connection is set up with Infrastructure management. When the connection is set up, this card lists your available virtual machine services. You can select a service from the list to open Infrastructure management to view more details and manage the service.

• All users can view the high-level overview data for hybrid applications and VM services (If applicable). However, the role-based access control can block you from completing other actions. Depending on your user role, you might not be able to open the linked dashboards to view more details or manage the hybrid applications or VM services.

Applications dashboards

From the main Applications dashboard, you can view information about all applications and select a specific application to view the dashboard for more information about that specific application.

Applications dashboard (all applications)

From the Overview tab on the Applications dashboard (Manage applications > Hybrid applications), you can complete the following tasks:

• Select to create an application using either of the following options:

  • Create application from YAML, which opens a YAML editor where you can define an application resource.
  • Create application from resources by selecting different resources to assemble into an application.

• View a list of hybrid applications in the Hybrid applications section

  • If needed, you can use the Find search field to filter the applications that are listed.

  • For each application, you can view the following information:

    • The application name and namespace.
    • The number of hybrid deployables and subscriptions that are associated with the application.
    • The cloud service provider that is associated with the application.
    • The defined purpose of the application.
    • The date when the application was created.

  • You can also expand the Options menu for each application to select more options. From this menu, you can edit or delete the application, and open and view Grafana or application monitoring for the application if the related applications are installed.

  • You can click the application name for any application to go to the Applications dashboard for that specific application to view the topology and more information about that application.

• View a list of virtual machine services in the Virtual machine services section.

  • This table lists data from Infrastructure management when a connection is set up with Infrastructure management. When the connection is set up, this table lists your available virtual machine services. You can select a service from the list to open Infrastructure management to view more details and manage the service.

  • For each VM service, you can view the following information:

    • The service name.
    • The number of associated VMs.
    • The service vendor.
    • The date when the service was created.

    For more information about installing the Infrastructure management, see Installing the IBM Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management.

For more information about creating a service within Infrastructure management, see Creating a Service in Infrastructure management for virtual machine Provisioning.

From the Resources tab for all applications, you can complete the following tasks:

• View the summary of resources for applications that are not based on hybrid deployables. This summary information is showed on different cards. These resource summary cards show the following information about your applications and related managed clusters:
  • The number of subscriptions on the hub cluster and the number of subscriptions that failed to deploy to the hub cluster.
  • The total number of managed clusters.
  • The number of subscriptions that are active for those managed clusters.
  • The total number of channels and placement rules for all applications. You can click each summary card to open the Search page and display more information about the selected resource.

• Select to create subscriptions, placement rules, and channels. When you select to create any of these resources, a YAML editor opens for you to use to define the resource. Default sample YAML content is included as templates to indicate the required fields to help you create any of these resource types. For more information, see:

  • Creating and managing subscriptions
  • Creating and managing placement rules
  • Creating and managing channels

  Note: When you view the Resources tab from the Applications dashboard for one or all applications, you might not view some existing resources. The Resources tab does not list hybrid deployable resources or resources that are associated with applications that consist of hybrid deployable (Deployable.core.hybridapp.io) resources. You can view hybrid deployable resources on the Overview tab for associated applications, such as within the topology view. The Resources tab shows resources for only applications that are associated with subscription (Subscription.app.ibm.com) resources.

• View the resource pipeline for all applications, which includes a table that displays details for your applications and other resources:

  • Each row provides details for a single application. Rows are included for all of your applications. If needed, you can use the search box to filter the application rows to find a matching application.
  • Expand the row for each application to view more details for the associated channels, subscriptions, and placement rules, view related incidents, and view the status of resource (pod) deployments.
  • Select an associated subscription for a channel and application to view more details about that subscription. These details include the subscribed deployables, the associated channel, namespace, and host-cluster, the status of any related resource (pod) deployments, and the placement settings that are used with the subscription.

Application dashboard (single applications)

From the Overview tab of the dashboard for a single application, you can complete the following tasks:

• Select to open Monitoring to view Application health information. You can select to view the following information:
  • View synthetic results for any synthetic tests that you run for the application.
  • View service level objectives and indicators for measuring the application performance.
• Select to view App monitoring data for the application, such as pod performance trends, cluster performance trends, and service-level objectives. Clicking this option opens the Applications page of Monitoring for the specific application.
• Select to Edit application. Clicking this option opens a side-panel for viewing and editing the application YAML. This YAML includes only the definition for the application and any associated hybrid deployables, subscriptions, and placement rules.

• View the resource topology for the application. This topology shows the application and related components such as channels, deployables, related services, pods, and placement rules.

  You can select any managed cluster or Deployer, or any component that runs on a managed cluster or Deployer to view more information about that component. You can also select any component on the hub cluster to edit to open a side-panel to view and edit the YAML definition for the application, such as to add, change, or remove resources.

• View Additional details for the application, including the application namespace, version, creation date, associated labels and annotations, and more.

From the Resources tab for a single application, you can complete the following tasks:

• Select to create a subscription, placement rule, or channel. When you select either option the editor window for defining the resource YAML opens.
• View the resource list for the application. This list includes all resources that are associated with the application, including pods, secrets, services, and more. This list indicates the name, namespace, kind, API groups, and status of each resource. The list also indicates the cluster where the resource is deployed, the creation date of the resource, and the last date that the resource was updated.

• View the resource pipeline for the application, which includes the summary of the application resources, options to create resources, and a table that provides more details about the resources. The resource pipeline for a single application includes similar information to the pipeline for all applications. The difference between the two pipelines is that this pipeline is scoped to just the selected application.

  You can select to edit the YAML for different components from this pipeline view.

From the Logs tab, you can complete the following tasks:

• For container-based applications, you can view the log information for each application pod. You can select the pod and a container that is associated with the pod to view the associated log. Log information is available for only container-based applications. Logs for VM services are not available.

Search

The Search page provides visibility into resources across all your clusters and resources across all your infrastructure endpoints. The console Search page supports searching for hybrid application resources by the component kind for each resource. You can open the Search page by clicking the Search icon in the console toolbar.

On this page, you can type any text value in the Search box and results include anything with that value from any property, such as name or namespace. For example, if you search for IBM, you can receive results such as IBM123. Your search results are grouped by kind, and each resource kind is grouped in a table. To search for resources, use the following values:

The results when you filter by kind:deployable includes both types of deployables:

• Deployables.core.hybridapp.io
• Deployable.app.ibm.com

You can filter by other fields, including name, namespace, cluster, label, and more, such as to find these and other application resources. For instance, you can filter by cluster so that you only see resources on the hub or on a specific managed cluster.

From the Search page results, you can view identifying details for each resource, including the name, namespace, cluster, labels, and creation date. If needed, you can also expand the Options menu in the search results for a resource to select to delete that resource.

For more information about using search, see console components.