Getting started with WSO2 AppFactory

In my previous post, I mentioned about the WSO2 AppFactory application development platform. From this post I'm planning to give you some guidelines on how to run the pre-configured VM image of WSO2 AppFactory version 1.0.0 milestone 8 release.

The WSO2 AppFactory version 1.0.0 milestone 8 can be downloaded using this link. This zip file contains several files.

• README.txt  

Readme file that describes how to run the VM image. This includes the necessary instructions on how to configure the IP settings in your local machine.

• Samples

This is the samples directory. The milestone 8 release contains 5 samples. 

• AFHelloWorld  
• APIMIntegration  
• DBSample  
• FavouriteColourApp  
• JenkinsTestReportingSample 

• Wso2Appfactory

This folder contains the VMware image. This image is a pre-configured VMware image that includes all the necessary servers. It is configured in a way that it will start all the servers at VM image boot-up. 

Prerequisites

1. VMware player should be installed in the host machine. 
2. Host machine should be connected to the internet(for email verification purposes)
3. At least 4GB ram is required(8GB ram is recommended)

Startup

• Start the VMware Player.
• Open the image. (open the Wso2Appfactory.vmx file)
• Start the virtual machine.
• If prompted, selected the option "I moved it".
• After startup, login to the server. (username - appfactory, password - appfactory)
• Get the IP address of the VM server. (ifconfig in linux)
• Add the following entries to the host file in your local machine( /etc/hosts in linux). Use the above IP address for these entries(replace 10.100.3.36 with the correct IP address).

10.100.3.36 appfactorypreview.wso2.com
10.100.3.36 appserver.prod.appfactorypreview.wso2.com
10.100.3.36 appserver.dev.appfactorypreview.wso2.com
10.100.3.36 appserver.test.appfactorypreview.wso2.com
10.100.3.36 controller.appfactorypreview.wso2.com
10.100.3.36 jenkins.appfactorypreview.wso2.com
10.100.3.36 redmine.appfactorypreview.wso2.com
10.100.3.36 apimanager.appfactorypreview.wso2.com

• Finally to access different servers, use the following URLs

Access Appfactory https://appfactorypreview.wso2.com/appmgt/
Access Dev cloud Application server https://appserver.dev.appfactorypreview.wso2.com/
Access Test cloud Application server https://appserver.test.appfactorypreview.wso2.com/
Access Production cloud Application server https://appserver.prod.appfactorypreview.wso2.com/ 

WSO2 AppFactory

WSO2 AppFactory is a platform that has the capability of managing the application development lifecycle of an organization. It is a platform that unifies the different aspects of application development such as,

1. Source control
2. Build management
3. Governance(application lifecycle management)
4. Issue tracking
5. API integration (integration with products like WSO2 API Manager) 

Couple of weeks back, we released WSO2 AppFactory 1.0.0 milestone 8. This version of WSO2 AppFactory has a set of key features which it inherited from its previous releases and some new features as well.

• Lifecycle management of an application
• Automated build and deployment
• Support multiple application versions
• APIs to integrate with SDLC Tool chain
• SVN/GIT repository provisioning
• Out of the box integration with Jenkins, Redmine
• Integrated with WSO2 API Manager
• Role based views
• Dashboards to monitor application development
• CIO/CEO dashboards 
• Dependency Management - API sandboxing
• Create applications with Git (new)
• Tagging builds with a name (new)
• Improved deployment model (new)
• Moving the servers to standard ports 80/443 (new)
• Ability to work with a Jenkins farm (new)
• Log download feature (new)
• Approval UI and human tasks (new)
• Human task enabled user creation process (new)
• Search Application Gadget (new)
• Event Stream View (new)
• Resource dependency Management UI (new)

We have created a pre-configured VM image with the WSO2 Appfactory 1.0.0 milestone 8 and it can be downloaded using [1]. This VM image is configured in such a way that, it will start all the necessary servers at image start-up. 

[1] http://dist.wso2.org/solutions/app-factory/m8/Wso2Appfactory-M8.zip