Using the AppScale Tools

AppScale 1.6.6 provides a streamlined interface to the AppScale Tools, making it easier to start AppScale clouds and interact with them. This document details the new, streamlined interface, and how to use it to simplify AppScale deployments.

• Note: This document assumes that you are familiar with the old, non-streamlined interface. If not, please read up on it before continuing. *

Step 1: Starting AppScale

Previously, starting AppScale in a cloud environment required a large number of command-line arguments:

# for EC2
appscale-run-instances -v --keyname appscale1 --group appscale1 --infrastructure ec2 --min 2 --max 2 --machine ami-ABCDEFG

But with the new interface, users need only run:

appscale init cloud  # or 'appscale init cluster' if using a virtualized cluster
appscale up

The first command, appscale init cloud, writes an AppScalefile in the current working directory that contains all of the parameters you'd normally have to pass into appscale-run-instances. You only have to run it once, as once you have the AppScalefile, you can just run appscale up in lieu of appscale-run-instances. If running via a virtualized cluster, appscale up will check your SSH keys and run appscale-add-keypair only if it needs to (that is, if the SSH key locally doesn't SSH to all of your machines).

Step 2: Interact with AppScale

Once AppScale is started via appscale up, a number of commands are available to interact with the running AppScale deployment. They include:

appscale deploy app: Deploys the Google App Engine application found at app (replacing appscale-upload-app).

appscale status: Prints the status of the virtual machines in your AppScale cloud (replacing appscale-describe-instances).

appscale ssh: Logs into the first node in your AppScale deployment. To log into other nodes, indicate which node you wish to log into (e.g., appscale ssh 1 to log into the second node).

appscale tail <id> <regex>: Follows the logs on the node with identifier id, where the logs to follow match <regex>. If no id or regex are given, this command defaults to tailing the AppController logs on the first node in your deployment.

Step 3: Power Down AppScale

Finally, to tear down your AppScale deployment:

appscale down

For virtualized cluster deployments, this stops all AppScale services on your cluster, and for cloud deployments, this also terminates the virtual machines in your AppScale cloud.