Connect a Spoke Environment

The Apollo Hub is capable of managing many different types of Environments. The first step in using Apollo is to install Apollo’s Spoke Control Plane in your Kubernetes clusters so that they can be managed by your Apollo Hub. Your Hub is already running services that store Environment-specific configuration like maintenance windows and the list of Product versions that should exist in the Environment. The Hub also manages how your Environments should receive Product upgrades.

Start by navigating to the Apollo home page and selecting → Get started . If you do not see a → Get started button, ensure your URL has the following format: https://yourApolloHub.com/workspace/autopilot/welcome. This will bring you to the Environment set-up process. The sections below will help you through the prompts.

Apollo will walk you through the following steps:

1. Do you have a Kubernetes cluster?

• If you have a cluster that meets the requirements, choose I have a Kubernetes cluster.
• If you want to set up a locally-running cluster, choose Set up a local Kubernetes cluster, which will send you to instructions on how to set up a local cluster. Once you have finished, return to the form and select I have a Kubernetes cluster.

2. Connect Environment to Apollo

• Choose an alphanumeric Environment name (hyphens are allowed) and note that this cannot be changed later. This unique ID will be used throughout Apollo to reference the Environment.
• Apollo will apply the following default settings to your Environment:
  • “XXXXXX will be the contact team of this Environment”: You already belong to a group that has permission to create Environments on the Apollo Hub. No action is required.
  • “Change requests will be auto-approved”: You can select Edit to change the accreditation from Dev to Standard. As a result, all changes for this Environment will require approval.
  • “The Apollo Control Plane module will be installed”: The selected value determines which Spoke Control Plane services Apollo will install in your Environment. No action is required.

3. Deploy Apollo Agent to Environment

Apollo will generate a manifest file for your Environment. Once the manifest is generated, apply it to your cluster using the provided commands. After services begin spinning up, you can view your Environment in Apollo. The Environment page has a number of tabs across the top, including Overview, Entities, Settings, and more. You can view the status of your Spoke Control Plane services in the Entities table, which shows the status of all software running in your Environment.

The Entities page will eventually show all services as Healthy and Up to date. Note that launchpod is not a long-running service and will not report health status back to the Hub.

If you are having trouble, you can try:

• Refreshing your browser.
• Searching for and selecting your Environment by name in the Hub’s Environment list.
• On your Kubernetes cluster, run kubectl get pods -A to ensure none of the Spoke Control Plane services are in a error state, such as crashLoopBackoff. Once the services have all started up, they should show a Running state.

You can repeat this process to connect more Kubernetes clusters to Apollo.

Next → Create a new Product and Product Release