Bill of Materials¶

To deploy infrastructure or software using TechZone Accelerator you need to start by creating a Bill of Materials (BOM) or using a predefined BOM. The TechZone Accelerator Toolkit site is the starting place to see the modules catalog and list of pre-defined solutions.

The BOM defines the modules you want to install. Available modules can be found in the Module Catalog

See the operate documentation for additional details of the BOM content

Dependencies¶

When you want to install a module there maybe some dependencies that module needs to allow it to be installed. For example, if you want to use GitOps (ArgoCD) to install an application then GitOps needs to be available and configured on the target cluster. Similarly if you want to install and configure GitOps then I need to have a cluster to install GitOps into.

Every module in then TechZone Accelerator Toolkit defines it's dependencies in a module.yaml file in the module's github repository. The module's repo is linked by clicking on the module name in the modules catalog

Alias¶

Sometimes a module dependency can be satisfied by multiple modules. In this case an alias can be used, where a module can register that it satisfies an alias. An example of this is the alias cluster. Any module that makes a Kubernetes cluster available to other modules will define the cluster alias. This then provides a generic way to specify a cluster dependency. So long as a module is included in a BOM that satisfies the cluster alias the dependency will be met.

If you explore the cluster category in the modules catalog you will see a number of options for installing a Kubernetes cluster, including an option to simple provide the login to an existing cluster - all these modules will satisfy the cluster dependency.

Optional¶

Some dependencies can be specified as optional. This is where a module may be able to complete the installation without the optional dependency being satisfied in the BOM. An example of this is that modules using GitOps to perform an installation will specify the cluster as optional. This is because the module doesn't need to interact with the cluster to complete the installation. The module can simple create content in a GitOps repository to complete the installation on a cluster.

Outstanding Questions¶

Verifying all dependencies are resolved¶

Once a BOM has been completed you can validate that all dependencies have been satisfied or can be resolved by running the iascable tool. This will be covered in more detail in the deploy section.

    iascable build -i my_bom.yaml

where my_bom.yaml is the file containing the BOM you want to verify

The iascable build command will create a folder called output, if it doesn't already exist, then generate a folder within the output folder named using the name property in the metadata section of the BOM.

Within this folder will be a file called bom.yaml which will be an expanded version of the original BOM (my_bom.yaml), pulling in all dependencies. If a dependency cannot be automatically resolved you will get an error detailing which dependencies cannot be resolved.

Variables¶