Get your Fabric running (and qualify for cool prizes) in 6 easy steps!
So, what's this all about?
Well, we're going to walk you through the steps of downloading and installing Appistry EAF onto a single fabric worker. Once you have that, we'll help you deploy and run your first fabric application. We have prepared a fabric application for the Appistry Peer2Peer Golden Ticket Contest that generates a Golden Ticket. You'll post that Golden Ticket to the Peer2Peer developer forums to enter the drawings for some great prizes.
What are we waiting for? Let's get ourselves an application fabric!
1 - Download the Fabric
If you already have your Appistry EAF v3.7.17 Community Edition installer, and license key, jump onto step 2!
If you haven't already done so, go to the Downloads menu above (or click here). While there, you'll do two things.
Download an Appistry EAF v3.7.17 Community Edition installer.
Trigger an email that will send you your own 5-worker/10-core fabric license. This license does not expire and is production usable. You can read more about the License Agreement on the downloads page.
What if I've already installed one of the beta copies of Appistry EAF v3.7?
We'd really like to encourage you to download the GA release and install it. We've added more features, and fixed various bugs. If you don't want to do that right now, you can still proceed for the purposes of the contest.
Someone else in the office already installed a fabric, do I really need to?
If we had our wishes, everyone would be running a fabric. The world would be a much better place.
For the purposes of the contest, the Golden Ticket that is generated for you by the fabric application below is tied to the EAF Community Edition license issued to you. To qualify for the prize drawings, you need to run the fabric application on a fabric worker that is using your license, and not a friend's license. Otherwise, things won't match up later when we do the random drawings.
Also note, for what we are doing here, we are just installing a single worker, and running a one worker fabric. Basically, you are doing what most fabric developers do anyway so they have their own sandbox for development.
Go ahead and grab the download bits, and your license. We'll wait here and then we can go onto step 2.
2 - Install your Fabric
If your Community Edition fabric is already installed and running, then you can skip to step 3.
Okay, you've got your Appistry EAF v3.7.17 Community Edition installer and license.cfg file, right? Just pick your OS platform of choice, and do the both the installation and the deploy the license key steps:
First, particularly on Windows installations, you really need to reboot to make sure that the Windows services tier recognizes the environment changes made by the installer. Otherwise, your fabric services will not start.
For Linux, the restart just gets everything running. Instructions for manually starting your fabric services can be found here.
Second, did you remember to Deploy the license key? If you haven't deployed your license key, then only the Fabric keeper service will start, and if you look at the log monitor, you'll see it's waiting on a valid license key to be deployed.
Your fabric is up and running, you'll deploy your first fabric application in step 3....
3 - Deploy the Contest Application
We've written and packaged a fabric application just for the contest. There are two implementations, a Java version for Windows and Linux, and a .NET C# version for Windows.
Unzip/untar the archive on the box you installed the fabric on. You will want to do this as a user that will have the Fabric environment settings that came with the EAF installation (for example FABRIC_HOME should be set).
Pick the version (Java or .NET) that you'd like to deploy and change to that directory (for example "cd AppistryPeer2PeerContest/java" on Linux. You can deploy both the java and .NET versions if you want to, but one will suffice.
Issue the following command:
To deploy the fabric application package, run the following command with the correct fabric administrative user, password, and fabric address.
Give the fabric 30 seconds or so to deploy and install the application. Then, to verify the deployment of the fabric application package, run the following command with the correct fabric administrative user, password, and fabric address.
fabric_ctl -d 239.255.0.1:30000 -u fabric-admin/fabric-admin fabric-version golden_ticket_java_app.fabric all
Give the fabric 30 seconds or so to deploy and install the application. Then, to verify the deployment of the fabric application package, run the following command with the correct fabric administrative user, password, and fabric address.
fabric_ctl -d 239.255.0.1:30000 -u fabric-admin/fabric-admin fabric-version golden_ticket_dotnet_app.fabric all
Sample Fabric Control application deployment output
You should see output similar to the screenshot below:
Now let's get our Golden Ticket for the contest...
4 - Run the Contest Application and Get Your Golden Ticket
We've provided Java and .NET client executables that use our Fabric Client API to execute a request to the fabric. When you run the executable, the following things occur:
The executable uses the client API to create a fabric request and sends it into the fabric.
The fabric runs the request, which results in a contest Golden Ticket being generated for you.
The fabric application returns the completed request to the client, and your Golden Ticket and other contest information is displayed.
Pick your configuration from the tabs below, and let's request your Golden Ticket from the fabric.
Run the following command from the command line. If you changed the default fabric address and port on installation, then replace the values below with the correct information.
run.cmd 239.255.0.1 31000
Run the following command from the command line. If you changed the default fabric address and port at some point, then replace the values below with the correct information.
./run.sh 239.255.0.1 31000
Run the following command from the command line. If you changed the default fabric address and port at some point, then replace the values below with the correct information.
golden_ticket_client.exe 239.255.0.1 31000
When you run this, you should see output like the following:
If you get an error, don't panic!
If you get an error when trying to run the fabric application, please come to the forums and let us know. We want everyone to be successful with their experience with the fabric. We know what an amazing service the fabric is, and want to help you see that also. The forums can be accessed via the Forums menu at the top of this page, or you may click here..
Why bother? Well, for one, we appreciate your help in improving the site and our product. You'll be helping build a great developer community! Besides, if you find a significant bug on the documentation site, or in the product, you get free stuff!
5 - Post your Golden Ticket to the Forums
Okay, now just copy the output and post it here in the forums. That post officially enters you into the random drawing for the prizes.
If you already closed the window where you generated your Golden Ticket, no harm is done. This particular fabric application is idempotent, you can run it again and again, and copy and post your Golden Ticket when you're ready.
6 - Done! Now what?
Head over to the Fabric Kick Start (left panel on the main documentation page). The Fabric Kick Start has:
An overview of the fabric, its components, and what makes up a fabric application
Tutorials, including a detailed Hello World tutorial that takes you through the simple steps required for coding, packaging, deploying and running your own fabric application.
And, join us in the forums, and help us build a great developer community! You'll find Appistry is as dedicated to working with you, as our fabric technologies are to making your business solutions scalable, reliable, easy to maintain, and successful.
We look forward to getting to know you, and interacting with you Peer2Peer.
