Use managed services

Find a service

Use the kf marketplace command to find a service you want to use in your App. Running the command without arguments will show all the service classes available. A service class represents a specific type of service e.g. a MySQL database or a Postfix SMTP relay.

$ kf marketplace
5 services can be used in Space "test", use the --service flag to list the plans for a service

Broker      Name        Space      Status  Description
minibroker  mariadb                Active  Helm Chart for mariadb
minibroker  mongodb                Active  Helm Chart for mongodb
minibroker  mysql                  Active  Helm Chart for mysql
minibroker  postgresql             Active  Helm Chart for postgresql
minibroker  redis                  Active  Helm Chart for redis

Service classes can have multiple plans available. A service plan generally corresponds to a version or pricing tier of the software. You can view the plans for a specific service by supplying the service name with the marketplace command:

$ kf marketplace --service mysql
Name    Free  Status  Description
5-7-14  true  Active  Fast, reliable, scalable, and easy to use open-source relational database system.
5-7-27  true  Active  Fast, reliable, scalable, and easy to use open-source relational database system.
5-7-28  true  Active  Fast, reliable, scalable, and easy to use open-source relational database system.

Provision a service

Once you have identified a service class and plan to provision, you can create an instance of the service using kf create-service:

$ kf create-service mysql 5-7-28 my-db
Creating service instance "my-db" in Space "test"
Waiting for service instance to become ready...
Success

Services are provisioned into a single Space. You can see the services in the current Space by running kf services:

$ kf services
Listing services in Space: "test"
Name   ClassName  PlanName  Age   Ready  Reason
my-db  mysql      5-7-28    111s  True   <nil>

You can delete a service using kf delete-service:

$ kf delete-service my-db

Bind a service

Once a service has been created, you can bind it to an App, which will inject credentials into the App so the service can be used. You can create the binding using kf bind-service:

$ kf bind-service my-app my-db
Creating service instance binding "binding-my-app-my-db" in Space "test"
Waiting for service instance binding to become ready...
Success

You can list all bindings in a Space using the kf bindings command:

$ kf bindings
Listing bindings in Space: "test"
Name                  App     Service  Age  Ready
binding-my-app-my-db  my-app  my-db    82s  True

Once a service is bound, restart the App using kf restart and the credentials will be in the VCAP_SERVICES environment variable.

You can delete a service binding with the kf unbind-service command:

$ kf unbind-service my-app my-db