Overview

Comprehensive automation can be quickly developed by using either the Rafay Command Line Interface (RCTL) utility or REST APIs. RCTL enables users to script and automate reproducible workflows without having to interact with the Controller via the Rafay Console GUI.

RCTL can be embedded into any kind of workflow automation or CI platform such as Jenkins etc. Rafay has developed integrations with popular CI platforms. Review detailed documentation describing Rafay Integrations with CI Platforms.

Scope¶

The RCTL CLI Utility can be embedded into your preferred workflow automation platform and be used to perform operations on the following resources managed by the Rafay Controller.

Examples¶

Rafay develops and maintains illustrative examples of "automation pipelines" for Jenkins that are available on a public Github repository. Review the CI Integrations Section for additional details and examples on how to embed RCTL into your preferred CI platform.

Platform Support¶

RCTL is supported on Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.

Downloads¶

Manual Download¶

The Rafay console provides several conveniences for end users (developers etc) by making it intuitive for them to download the RCTL binaries.

• On the left panel of the admin console, click on "My Tools".
• Click on the "Download CLI" button and download the package for your operating system
• Unzip the downloaded package into a folder (for example: “rctl”).

Automated Download¶

Workflow automation systems and pipelines can embed the download URLs for RCTL binaries. Note that this download URL will always provide the "latest version" of RCTL.

Check Version¶

Use the following steps to check the version of RCTL. Users are encouraged to upgrade to the latest versions on a periodic basis (esp. with every Rafay release) to ensure they can leverage the latest functionality.

• Open Terminal (on macOS or Linux) or Command Prompt (on Windows).
• Navigate (i.e. change directory) to the folder where RCTL was unzipped.
• Type the following command.

./rctl version

VERSION: r1.3.4
BUILD: tags/r1.3.4-99
BUILD-TIME: Wed Sep 23 01:52:31 UTC 2020
ARCH: darwin/amd64

Embedded Help¶

RCTL can provide contextual help when requested.

./rctl -h
A CLI tool to manage resources in Rafay Systems platform.

Usage:
  rctl [command]

Available Commands:
  completion  Generate completion script
  config      Manage configuration of the CLI utility
  create      Create various resources in Rafay Console
  delete      Delete various resources in Rafay Console
  download    Download various resources in Rafay Console
  get         get various resources in Rafay Console
  help        Help about any command
  kubeconfig  Generate kubeconfig
  namespace   Manage namespaces
  publish     Publish resources like blueprints, addons and workloads
  status      Find out the status of resources like workloads
  unpublish   Unpublish resources like workloads
  update      update the details of various resource
  validate    Validate resources like workloads
  version     Displays version of the CLI utility
  workload    Manage workloads

OR

./rtcl --help

Usage Modes¶

RCTL supports both Interactive and Scripted usage modes.

Interactive Mode¶

This is the default mode. This is aimed at human users that wish to interact directly with the Rafay Controller and view the results in a human readable format.

Scripted Mode¶

This mode is useful when RCTL is embedded into a workflow such as a CI/CD pipeline. The generated output will ideally be in a JSON or YAML format that can be consumed programmatically by the pipeline.

Exit Codes¶

The Rafay CLI returns an exit code (aka return code) for every command. The standard exit code is "0" for SUCCESS. Any other number for an exit code should be considered an ERROR.

To get the exit code, type "echo $?" at the command prompt after the command completes. Customers can use these exit codes to check for status of a CLI command when it is embedded into a workflow/pipeline.

#!/bin/bash

./rctl version
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
  echo "The command ran OK"
  exit 0
else
  echo "The command failed"
  exit 1
fi

Troubleshooting¶

RCTL can be configured to print detailed information via "verbose mode" to assist with troubleshooting. During a support call, Rafay Support may request you to use the "debug" mode to assist with debugging.

Verbose Mode¶

For example, to enable "verbose" mode while retrieving the list of workloads

./rctl get workload --verbose

Debug Mode¶

For example, to enable "debug" mode while retrieving the list of workloads

./rctl get workload --debug

Auto Completion¶

RCTL can generate auto completion scripts for your target platform and shell.

./rctl completion -h

On Linux or macOS, you can use the following command to identify the current shell. In the example below, the current shell is "bash".

echo $SHELL
/bin/bash

Deprecated Commands¶

Early versions of RCTL were limited to lifeycle operations for "workloads" and "namespaces". In an effort to enable full end to end automation, the scope of RTCL has dramatically increased to cater for lifecycle management of multiple resource types. Upcoming, future versions of RCTL will continue to expand scope further.

To accommodate this significant change, RCTL commands are now "action centric" instead of "resource centric". Although, previous "resource" centric commands will continue to work, they should be considered as deprecated and will be removed in the near future.