Using CA AppLogic › Appliance Developer Guide › Appliance Overview › Create Appliance › Select Approach › Branch from Generic Appliance

Branch from Generic Appliance

The system catalog contains generic appliances that developers drag and drop on the canvas. This action instantiates the appliance inside the application. However, the catalog class still manages the appliance. When you update the catalog, all appliances that are instantiated from that class are partially re-imaged to match the updated class.

To create your own classes for delivery in the catalog, you must break the connection from the existing class. This break allows your development to exist independent of the original class. The breaking the connection is named branching the class. Branching the appliance creates a standalone entity that is named a singleton.

The first step is creating a sandbox application to configure your appliance. Once created, you select and drag a generic appliance to the canvas. You then create a class instance by branching the generic appliance.

The following two generic appliances are available in the system catalog:

LUX

This appliance has a 200MB volume with a minimum installation of Linux.

LINUX

This server has a 2GB volume with a standard server installation of Linux.

Create Sandbox Application

Follow these steps:

1. In the GUI, select the Applications tab and click the New Application icon.

   The New Application dialog displays. You can create a new application to use as a sandbox application to configure your appliance. When complete, you can delete the sandbox application.

2. Enter the name of the application.

   The application names consist of alphanumeric characters, underscores, and dashes. No other special characters are permitted.

3. Click OK.

   The creation message displays. When complete, the application displays in the Application List.

4. Click the application name.

   The application displays in the Infrastructure Editor. You can now set the class boundary.

Select Appliance

Follow these steps:

1. In the system Catalog, scroll to the Generic section and drag and drop the generic LUX6 appliance to the canvas.

   

2. Right-click the appliance and select Branch Class.

   The confirmation prompt displays.

3. Click OK.

   The Class Branch window displays the branching status. When complete, the success message displays.

4. Click Close.
5. In the Infrastructure Editor, rename appliance by right clicking the appliance and selecting Attributes.

   The Instance Settings window displays.

6. In the Name field, enter a name that is indicative of your appliance and click OK.
7. In the Infrastructure Editor, click Save.

   The new class displays an S to signify the class is now a singleton.