Entities represent the software or infrastructure in an Environment that is reported to, and usually managed by, the Spoke Control Plane. Each Entity belongs to a single Environment and has an Entity Type, which identifies the common characteristics of Entities of that type. An example of an Entity Type is a Helm chart.
Entities represent an instance of a Product. Apollo supports Helm charts and Assets as Product types.
Apollo manages Entities based on two concepts of state described below.
Agents running in a given Environment report information about all the Entities they are responsible for to their Spoke Control Plane. Such information is called the Reported State for the Entity. The information reported for each Entity depends on its Type. For example, Helm charts have their names, versions, release name, Kubernetes namespace, and configuration overrides reported. The Reported State of all Entities within an Environment can be used to power data-rich views. With the information provided by Apollo, teams can deploy and manage their software through a single pane-of-glass.
The Spoke Control Plane can be configured to manage Entities within an Environment. When doing so, some per-Entity configuration must be provided to tell Apollo how each Entity should be managed. Such information is called the Entity settings.
Similar to Reported State, the settings for an Entity also depends on the Entity Type, although there are common pieces of information for all Entity Types. Examples of information included in the Entity settings for a Helm chart are the Release Channel the Entity subscribes to and its maintenance windows. Entity settings override the default Environment values set in the Environment settings.
When an Entity has both Entity settings and Reported State, it is a managed Entity. This means that Apollo will issue Plans for the Entity.
When an Entity has Reported State, but no Entity settings, it is an unmanaged Entity. This Entity will show up in Apollo, but Apollo will not issue Plans for it. An unmanaged Entity can become managed by adding the Entity in Apollo.