VSHN AppCat (Application Catalog)

The VSHN Application Catalog (in short: AppCat) is a Cloud Native marketplace which offers services from Cloud Service Providers like Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Aiven.io, Exoscale or cloudscale.ch, as well as managed services from VSHN.

These services can be easily ordered directly with Kubernetes resources (YAML files) and therefore can be tightly integrated in any GitOps or CI/CD workflow. Specifying which services your software needs to run is done with the same mechanisms as you use to deploy your application to Kubernetes.

By using the VSHN AppCat you can focus on using the services, we take care of building and operating them.

Head over to Service Availability to see what services are available today.

Your desired service or Cloud Service Provider is not listed, or you want your own service to be available in the VSHN AppCat? Please contact sales@vshn.ch. You might also want to take a look at our roadmap and share your insights there.

Common Features

All services include these features, according to their service maturity:

Self-Service Instance Provisioning and Configuration	Service instances can be self-service ordered and are provisioned fully automated in the background. Access to self-service provisioning is provided via custom Kubernetes configuration objects in the Kubernetes cluster or via Open Service Broker API (on request).
Best-Practice Configuration Management	Services are configured with best practices and the configuration is updated continuously as we learn improvements during day-2 operations and from the community. Industry standards are used for security configuration and wherever possible TLS encrypted connections are offered by default.
Maintenance and Security Operations	Patch updates are applied as they get available. We monitor security information for services and apply zero-day patches or workaround configuration as they become available.
Data Protection and Recovery	All services offer a regular backup option. See the service descriptions for more details.
Service Metrics	Performance metrics are collected regularly and are available as graphs to the user. The metrics are automatically monitored and acted upon irregularities, see Monitoring and Alerting below.
Monitoring and Alerting	Service Level Indicators are monitored and alerted upon. Depending on the service level alerts are automatically handled by a VSHNeer.
Service Logging	All logs are collected and are available to debug service errors.
Support by VSHN or Vendor	Support for all services are available from VSHN support engineers. Depending on the service, additional support by the software vendor or a third-party might be available.

Self-Service Instance Provisioning and Configuration

Service instances can be self-service ordered and are provisioned fully automated in the background. Access to self-service provisioning is provided via custom Kubernetes configuration objects in the Kubernetes cluster or via Open Service Broker API (on request).

Best-Practice Configuration Management

Services are configured with best practices and the configuration is updated continuously as we learn improvements during day-2 operations and from the community. Industry standards are used for security configuration and wherever possible TLS encrypted connections are offered by default.

Maintenance and Security Operations

Patch updates are applied as they get available. We monitor security information for services and apply zero-day patches or workaround configuration as they become available.

Data Protection and Recovery

All services offer a regular backup option. See the service descriptions for more details.

Service Metrics

Performance metrics are collected regularly and are available as graphs to the user. The metrics are automatically monitored and acted upon irregularities, see Monitoring and Alerting below.

Monitoring and Alerting

Service Level Indicators are monitored and alerted upon. Depending on the service level alerts are automatically handled by a VSHNeer.

Service Logging

All logs are collected and are available to debug service errors.

Support by VSHN or Vendor

Support for all services are available from VSHN support engineers. Depending on the service, additional support by the software vendor or a third-party might be available.

A more technical documentation is available under kb.vshn.ch/app-catalog.

Use Cases

These use cases describe a few scenarios where the VSHN AppCat helps:

I’m a Kubernetes user: Declaratively specify service dependencies for the software to be deployed, independent of the infrastructure the software will be deployed to. Directly integrate service ordering in the software deployment workflow.
I’m an APPUiO Cloud user: A service can be ordered directly from within an APPUiO Cloud Zone with Kubernetes custom resources. Provisioning happens fully automated and VSHN takes care of the service ordered.
I’m an APPUiO Managed user: A service can be ordered directly from within the cluster with Kubernetes custom resources. There is no need to think about the exact offering needed, this is taken care of by the experts at VSHN, abstracting all the details needed to provision the best matching service.
I’m a Service Provider: As a service provider you can offer self-service managed services to your users of your VM- or Kubernetes based offering. With the VSHN AppCat you can easily enhance your offering with this kind of services. VSHN brings all the needed software and processes to your infrastructure to enable self-service provisioning in your own infrastructure, tightly integrated into your offering.
I’m a VSHNeer: You’re implementing an environment for the software of the VSHN customer and want to focus on the customers' software. The VSHN AppCat brings the "one-click" infrastructure ordering experience which allows focusing on the customer solution.