In this document we will see how to access the environment once it has been launched from a Blueprint.

In the left navigation panel, choose "Environment" and then "Overview". On the context switcher navigation at the top, ensure that you are on the correct Blueprint and Environment combination.

Page Organization

Page Name	Details
Overview	Environment and Network Information about the environment
Secrets and Variables	You can add/Modify Environment Specific Variables and Secrets
Releases	Perform a release on the environment. More details in Performing a Release
Applications	See all your running applications and application specific informations here. You can check metrics of each application or override any variables of that application on this page
Tools	You can find environment specific metrics and a link to access your logs through a web based console.
Alerts	Any environment specific alerts
Backups	Backups for any databases etc
Provided Resources	Any provided resources which are not managed by Facets
Information	Database credentials, NAT IP addresses etc. This page can be accessed only with relevant permissions
Template Inputs	If any of your templates are parameterized, then you can provide the inputs here. For e.g., if you want a database which is client specific. With client as inputs, you can generate that many databases

Accessing the K8s cluster

To access the k8s cluster of the environment for viewing or debugging, navigate to the "Overview" page. Here you can download the k8s credentials.

After the file is downloaded, you can access the k8s cluster with the usual kubectl command. For e.g.

export KUBECONFIG=<file>
kubectl get pods

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Your permissions on the k8s cluster will depend on the Additional Roles your admin has provided to you on the Facets Control Plane.

The credential file will be valid for 24 hours. The credentials can be refreshed from the environment overview page or by using the Command Line Tool.

Logs

While you can access the application logs directly using kubectl , a better method is to enable logging in a NFS folder. A plugin name logging_nfs provides the feature of collecting, rotating and archiving logs. Make sure your stack.json has the following section.

“composition”: {
    “plugins”: [
      { 
        “name”: “logging_nfs”   
      }
    ]
  },

Now, you can access the logs from "Environment" -> "Tools" page. The "logs" link will contain and generic username and password to access a web-based console. The logs are organized as folders in application/containers and get pushed to an archived store like S3 at configured time interval. Based on your permissions, you will be able to download archived logs as well.

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For using this plugin effectively, the application containers must log on the Console. The plugin will take care of streaming the logs to the NFS/EFS.