Quick Start

This guide covers the basics of using a Helion Stackato PaaS. To follow along, you will need:

  • A user account
  • A copy of the stackato CLI client
  • A web browser

If you want to run your own Helion Stackato micro cloud system for local development and testing, download a copy of the Helion Stackato VM and follow the setup instructions in the Admin Guide.

Management Console

The web interface for Helion Stackato is called the Management Console. You can use it to:

  • See your current usage and quota
  • Monitor and manage applications you have deployed
  • See which runtimes, frameworks, and services are available
  • Deploy applications from Sample Applications

To use it, open the API Endpoint URL (for example, https://api.stacka.to) in your favorite browser. Log in with the username and password that have been set up for you on the system.

The interface should be mostly self-explanatory. It exposes most of the functionality you have access to as an end user, but to deploy your own applications from source code on your local machine you will need to use the stackato CLI client.

Helion Stackato Client

The stackato client is used for pushing applications to Helion Stackato and interacting with the system from the command line.

  1. Download the client for your platform (Windows, OS X, Linux x86, Linux x64)
  2. Unzip the archive in a convenient directory.
  3. Add the the executable to your system/shell $PATH by:
  • moving it to a directory in your $PATH,
  • creating a symlink from a directory in your $PATH, or
  • creating a shell alias for the executable.
  1. Confirm that the client is installed correctly by running stackato help.

The Helion Stackato Client Command Reference has a full list of commands and options.

Target and Login

To connect the stackato client to the PaaS, use the target command to specify the API Endpoint URL. This is normally the hostname prepended with "api." for example:

$ stackato target <api.stacka.to>
Target:       https://api.stacka.to
organization: <none>
Space:        <none>
Successfully targeted to [https://api.stacka.to]

Once you have successfully targeted Helion Stackato, you must authenticate using stackato login with the credentials that have been created for you:

$ stackato login <user@example.com>
Attempting login to [https://api.stacka.to]
Password: \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
Successfully logged into [https://api.stacka.to]

Setting organization and Space

If you are logging in for the first time, your user account will not automatically choose an organization and Space for deployment.

To set the organization you belong to:

$ stackato switch-org <org-name>
Switching to organization <org-name> ... OK
Unsetting current space ... OK
Target:       https://api.stacka.to
organization: <org-name>
Space:        <none>

To set the Space you want to deploy applications to:

$ stackato switch-space dev
Switching to organization <org-name> ... OK
Switching to space dev ... OK
Target:       https://api.stacka.to
organization: test-org
Space:        dev

Note

If your account is not a member of a Space, you will need an organization Manager to add you as a Developer. If you are an organization manager (or Admin), you can create create new Spaces in the Management Console or with the stackato create-space command.

Deploying Apps

The steps for deploying applications will vary slightly depending on the language or framework used, but the basic command is as follows:

$ stackato push --as [<appname>]

By default, the client will take application code from your current working directory and push it to Helion Stackato for further staging and configuration, prompting for additional configuration information as necessary.

Sample Applications

Numerous sample applications are available from Helion Stackato-Apps on Github, each with a README.md file showing how to deploy it on Helion Stackato.

Many of these have manifest.yml configuration files, so you can skip the interactive prompts by using the -n option:

$ stackato push -n [<appname>]

Test the Application

The output of stackato push will show the URL of the running application. Paste this URL into a web browser to try the application or run:

$ stackato open [<appname>]

Documentation on configuring applications in specific languages and frameworks is available in the Deploying Apps section.