Cloud Foundry Components

Page last updated:

Cloud Foundry components include a self-service application execution engine, an automation engine for application deployment and lifecycle management, and a scriptable command line interface (CLI), as well as integration with development tools to ease deployment processes. Cloud Foundry has an open architecture that includes a buildpack mechanism for adding frameworks, an application services interface, and a cloud provider interface.

Refer to the descriptions below for more information about Cloud Foundry components. Some descriptions include links to more detailed documentation.

Routing

Router

The router routes incoming traffic to the appropriate component, either a Cloud Controller component or a hosted application running on a Diego Cell.

The router periodically queries the Diego Bulletin Board System (BBS) to determine which cells and containers each application currently runs on. Using this information, the router recomputes new routing tables based on the IP addresses of each cell virtual machine (VM) and the host-side port numbers for the cell’s containers.

Authentication

OAuth2 Server (UAA) and Login Server

The OAuth2 server (the UAA) and Login Server work together to provide identity management.

App Lifecycle

Cloud Controller and Diego Brain

The Cloud Controller (CC) directs the deployment of applications. To push an app to Cloud Foundry, you target the Cloud Controller. The Cloud Controller then directs the Diego Brain through the CC-Bridge to coordinate individual Diego cells to stage and run applications.

The Cloud Controller also maintain records of orgs, spaces, user roles, services, and more.

nsync, BBS, and Cell Reps

To keep applications available, cloud deployments must constantly monitor their states and reconcile them with their expected states, starting and stopping processes as required. In pre-Diego architecture, the Health Manager (HM9000) performed this function. The nsync, BBS, and Cell Reps use a more distributed approach.

The nsync, BBS, and Cell Rep components work together along a chain to keep apps running. At one end is the user. At the other end are the instances of applications running on widely-distributed VMs, which may crash or become unavailable.

Here is how the components work together:

• nsync receives a message from the Cloud Controller when the user scales an app. It writes the number of instances into a DesiredLRP structure in the Diego BBS database.
• BBS uses its convergence process to monitor the DesiredLRP and ActualLRP values. It launches or kills application instances as appropriate to ensure the ActualLRP count matches the DesiredLRP count.
• Cell Rep monitors the containers and provides the ActualLRP value.

App Storage and Execution

Blobstore

The blobstore is a repository for large binary files, which Github cannot easily manage because Github is designed for code. Blobstore binaries include:

• Application code packages
• Buildpacks
• Droplets

You can configure the blobstore as either an internal server or an external S3 or S3-compatible endpoint.

Diego Cell

Each application VM has a Diego Cell that executes application start and stop actions locally, manages the VM’s containers, and reports app status and other data to the BBS and Loggregator.

Services

Service Brokers

Applications typically depend on such as databases or third-party SaaS providers. When a developer provisions and binds a service to an application, the service broker for that service is responsible for providing the service instance.

Messaging

Consul and BBS

Cloud Foundry component VMs communicate with each other internally through HTTP and HTTPS protocols, sharing temporary messages and data stored in two locations:

• A Consul server stores longer-lived control data, such as component IP addresses and distributed locks that prevent components from duplicating actions.

• Diego’s Bulletin Board System (BBS) stores more frequently updated and disposable data such as cell and application status, unallocated work, and heartbeat messages. The BBS stores data in MySQL, using the Go MySQL Driver.

The route-emitter component uses the NATS protocol to broadcast the latest routing tables to the routers. In pre-Diego CF architecture, the NATS Message Bus carried all internal component communications.

Metrics and Logging

Loggregator

The Loggregator (log aggregator) system streams application logs to developers.