AppSail

Introduction

Overview

Catalyst AppSail, a component of Catalyst Serverless, is a fully-managed, independent, platform for deploying web services to the cloud with ease. AppSail provides you with a powerful and highly-scalable platform to deploy anything from simple web apps to large enterprise applications, without any infrastructure setup or management concerns.

You can deploy a web service to Catalyst AppSail in one of these ways-

• As a Catalyst-Managed Runtime: Catalyst provides native support for web applications of specific Java, Node.js, and Python runtimes. You can directly deploy the build files of your application to AppSail in this case, to host it on the cloud. AppSail supports any frameworks, libraries, plugins, or dependencies of these supported runtimes that you might use in your application, provided they are not platform-dependant.

• As a Custom Runtime: You can deploy a container image (OCI image) of your application from any of these container registry services- Docker Hub, AWS Elastic Container Registry, or Google Artifact Registry, or a container image from your local registry. This custom runtime support enables you to develop and deploy web services of any runtime or framework of your choice. For example, you can deploy applications in PHP, Go, Ruby, or any runtime of Python, Java, or Node.js that are not supported natively by Catalyst.

Unlike Catalyst Serverless functions that you code following a Catalyst-specific template based on the function type, AppSail services can be completely independent of any Catalyst-specific coding requirements. You can still employ any Catalyst component in your AppSail service through its platform-specific SDK.

Deployment Methods

You can deploy an AppSail service using any of these tools-

Deploy from the Catalyst CLI

• Catalyst-managed runtime: You can initialize or add an AppSail service from the CLI, and deploy it to the cloud from your local system for all Catalyst-managed runtimes. The CLI also supports a standalone deploy without prior initialization.

• Custom runtime: You can deploy a container image of your app to the cloud from your local registry by initializing or adding it as an AppSail service similarly. Catalyst supports two protocols (as a Docker image or a Docker archive) for this purpose. You can do a standalone deploy as well.

Deploy from the Catalyst Console

• Catalyst-managed runtime: You can upload the build file of your application directly in the console in the Serverless section, configure the necessary details, and deploy it instantly.

• Custom runtime: Catalyst enables you to deploy a container image hosted on one of the supported cloud container registry services on AppSail by providing its URL and other details, after integrating with the registry service.

Instance and Platform Management

AppSail offers you complete control over your app’s coding structure and execution. Catalyst enables you to perform a variety of configurations on your web service’s execution environment, such as defining the memory and disk size to be allocated for its execution, the port it must be run on, environment variables required for your app, or the app’s startup command.

You can access all the apps you deploy through the AppSail URL that Catalyst will generate automatically. Additionally, you have the option to map your own domain to an AppSail service and access it through your custom domain URL.

When your service is run, Catalyst spawns server instances for its execution as needed, and scales them up or down based on the traffic, ensuring minimal latency. You will be able to view the spawned instances for your service from the console when it is run, and perform activities such as deleting service instances. Catalyst also offers detailed reports, stats, and execution logs of all your AppSail services that were executed, which helps you make informed business decisions.

This help document covers the entirety of deploying software services onto AppSail, directly or as container images through the console or CLI. It also includes helpful guides for simple applications that you can build in various frameworks of each Catalyst-managed runtimes, along with sample code and the steps to associate them with AppSail. You can also find examples to debug an AppSail service in different IDEs.