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Use Application Configuration Service for Tanzu

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  • 6 minutes to read

Note

Azure Spring Apps is the new name for the Azure Spring Cloud service. Although the service has a new name, you'll see the old name in some places for a while as we work to update assets such as screenshots, videos, and diagrams.

This article applies to: ❌ Basic/Standard tier ✔️ Enterprise tier

This article shows you how to use Application Configuration Service for VMware Tanzu® with Azure Spring Apps Enterprise Tier.

Application Configuration Service for VMware Tanzu is one of the commercial VMware Tanzu components. It enables the management of Kubernetes-native ConfigMap resources that are populated from properties defined in one or more Git repositories.

With Application Configuration Service for Tanzu, you have a central place to manage external properties for applications across all environments. To understand the differences from Spring Cloud Config Server in Basic/Standard tier, see the Use Application Configuration Service for external configuration section of Migrate an Azure Spring Apps Basic or Standard tier instance to Enterprise tier.

Prerequisites

  • An already provisioned Azure Spring Apps Enterprise tier instance with Application Configuration Service for Tanzu enabled. For more information, see Quickstart: Build and deploy apps to Azure Spring Apps using the Enterprise tier.

    Note

    To use Application Configuration Service for Tanzu, you must enable it when you provision your Azure Spring Apps service instance. You can't enable it after you provision the instance.

Manage Application Configuration Service for Tanzu settings

Application Configuration Service for Tanzu supports Azure DevOps, GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket for storing your configuration files.

To manage the service settings, open the Settings section and add a new entry under the Repositories section.

Screenshot of the Application Configuration Service page showing how to add a repository.

The following table describes properties for each entry.

Property Required? Description
Name Yes A unique name to label each Git repository.
Patterns Yes Patterns to search in Git repositories. For each pattern, use a format such as {application} or {application}/{profile} rather than {application}-{profile}.yml. Separate the patterns with commas. For more information, see the Pattern section of this article.
URI Yes A Git URI (for example, https://github.com/Azure-Samples/piggymetrics-config or git@github.com:Azure-Samples/piggymetrics-config)
Label Yes The branch name to search in the Git repository.
Search path No Optional search paths, separated by commas, for searching subdirectories of the Git repository.

Pattern

Configuration is pulled from Git backends using what you define in a pattern. A pattern is a combination of {application}/{profile} as described in the following guidelines.

  • {application} - The name of an application whose configuration you're retrieving. The value application is considered the default application and includes configuration information shared across multiple applications. Any other value refers to a specific application and includes properties for both the specific application and shared properties for the default application.
  • {profile} - Optional. The name of a profile whose properties you may be retrieving. An empty value, or the value default, includes properties that are shared across profiles. Non-default values include properties for the specified profile and properties for the default profile.

Authentication

The following image shows the three types of repository authentication supported by Application Configuration Service for Tanzu.

Screenshot of where to edit authentication types.

  • Public repository.

    You don't need extra Authentication configuration when you use a public repository. Select Public in the Authentication form.

  • Private repository with basic authentication.

    The following table shows the configurable properties you can use to set up a private Git repository with basic authentication.

    Property Required? Description
    username Yes The username used to access the repository.
    password Yes The password used to access the repository.

  • Private repository with SSH authentication.

    The following table shows the configurable properties you can use to set up a private Git repository with SSH.

    Property Required? Description
    Private key Yes The private key that identifies the Git user. Passphrase-encrypted private keys aren't supported.
    Host key No The host key of the Git server. If you've connected to the server via Git on the command line, the host key is in your .ssh/known_hosts file. Don't include the algorithm prefix, because it's specified in Host key algorithm.
    Host key algorithm No The algorithm for hostKey: one of ssh-dss, ssh-rsa, ecdsa-sha2-nistp256, ecdsa-sha2-nistp384, and ecdsa-sha2-nistp521. (Required if supplying Host key).
    Strict host key checking No Optional value that indicates whether the backend should be ignored if it encounters an error when using the provided Host key. Valid values are true and false. The default value is true.

To validate access to the target URI, select Validate. After validation completes successfully, select Apply to update the configuration settings.

Refresh strategies

Use the following steps to refresh your application configuration after you update the configuration file in the Git repository.

  1. Load the configuration to Application Configuration Service for Tanzu.

    The refresh frequency is managed by Azure Spring Apps and fixed to 60 seconds.

  2. Load the configuration to your application.

A Spring application holds the properties as the beans of the Spring Application Context via the Environment interface. The following list shows several ways to load the new configurations:

  • Restart the application. Restarting the application always loads the new configuration.

  • Call the /actuator/refresh endpoint exposed on the config client via the Spring Actuator.

    To use this method, add the following dependency to your configuration client’s pom.xml file.

    <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
</dependency>

    You can also enable the actuator endpoint by adding the following configurations:

    management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=refresh, bus-refresh, beans, env

    After you reload the property sources by calling the /actuator/refresh endpoint, the attributes bound with @Value in the beans having the annotation @RefreshScope are refreshed.

    @Service
@Getter @Setter
@RefreshScope
public class MyService {
    @Value
    private Boolean activated;
}

    Use curl with the application endpoint to refresh the new configuration.

    curl -X POST http://{app-endpoint}/actuator/refresh

Configure Application Configuration Service for Tanzu settings using the portal

Use the following steps to configure Application Configuration Service for Tanzu using the portal.

  1. Select Application Configuration Service.

  2. Select Overview to view the running state and resources allocated to Application Configuration Service for Tanzu.

    Screenshot of the Application Configuration Service page showing the Overview tab.

  3. Select Settings and add a new entry in the Repositories section with the Git backend information.

  4. Select Validate to validate access to the target URI. After validation completes successfully, select Apply to update the configuration settings.

    Screenshot of the Application Configuration Service page showing the Settings tab.

Configure Application Configuration Service for Tanzu settings using the CLI

Use the following steps to configure Application Configuration Service for Tanzu using the CLI.

az spring application-configuration-service git repo add \
    --name <entry-name> \
    --patterns <patterns> \
    --uri <git-backend-uri> \
    --label <git-branch-name>

Use Application Configuration Service for Tanzu with applications using the portal

When you use Application Configuration Service for Tanzu with a Git back end and use the centralized configurations, you must bind the app to Application Configuration Service for Tanzu. After binding the app, use the following steps to configure the pattern to be used by the app.

  1. Open the App binding tab.

  2. Select Bind app and choose one app in the dropdown. Select Apply to bind.

    Screenshot of the Application Configuration Service page showing the App binding tab.

    Note

    When you change the bind/unbind status, you must restart or redeploy the app to for the binding to take effect.

  3. Select Apps, and then select the pattern(s) to be used by the apps.

    1. In the left navigation menu, select Apps to view the list all the apps.

    2. Select the target app to configure patterns for from the name column.

    3. In the left navigation pane, select Configuration, then select General settings.

    4. In the Config file patterns dropdown, choose one or more patterns from the list.

      Screenshot of the Application Configuration Service page showing the General settings tab.

    5. Select Save

Use Application Configuration Service for Tanzu with applications using the CLI

Use the following command to use Application Configuration Service for Tanzu with applications.

az spring application-configuration-service bind --app <app-name>
az spring app deploy \
    --name <app-name> \
    --artifact-path <path-to-your-JAR-file> \
    --config-file-pattern <config-file-pattern>

Enable/disable Application Configuration Service after service creation

You can enable and disable Application Configuration Service after service creation using the Azure portal or Azure CLI. Before disabling Application Configuration Service, you're required to unbind all of your apps from it.

Use the following steps to enable or disable Application Configuration Service using the Azure portal:

  1. Navigate to your service resource, and then select Application Configuration Service.
  2. Select Manage.
  3. Select or unselect Enable Application Configuration Service, and then select Save.
  4. You can now view the state of Application Configuration Service on the Application Configuration Service page.

Next steps