Workflows

Workflows are scheduled and manual lifecycles of deploying, updating or tearing down installs of your app template, including components and actions.

What is a Workflow?

A workflow represents the complete lifecycle of deploying, updating or tearing down an install of your app template and its components. Workflows also manage the execution of actions.

If new to Nuon, familiarize yourself with the app and install life cycle first.

Each install has a Workflows tab that lists its workflows newest first, with each workflow’s status and how long ago it ran. Open a workflow to see its steps in order, its pending approvals and how many steps have completed.

Workflow Types

Install

An install workflow covers all of the steps required to install an app from scratch. This includes creating the install stack, creating the virtual machine and starting the Nuon runner, provisioning the sandbox, syncing secrets, deploying the components of the app with Terraform, Helm or Kubernetes manifests e.g., databases, applications, certificates, application load balancers, and executing actions which are bash scripts to perform additional configurations like initializing a database or performing a health check.

Component

A component workflow deploys a component. If there are dependent components, the user can instruct Nuon to deploy those components as well.

Action

An action workflow executes the script associated with an action. e.g., initialize a database, run a health check on a component, make a one-off configuration change.

Workflow States

Success (green checkmark): A step or install component completed successfully

Error (red X): One or more steps failed

Cancelled (yellow X): An install or step was cancelled by the user

In-progress (brown circle pulsing or clockwise spinning blue circle): A component or action is underway

Workflow Approvals

Components using Terraform, Helm and Kubernetes manifests run a plan step which requires the user to approve or reject the step before proceeding to the apply or deploying of the sandbox and components.

A plan step waiting on you shows Awaiting approval in the step list. Open it to see each resource the plan will create, update, delete or read, then choose Approve plan, Deny plan or Retry plan.

You can approve plan steps in bulk at two levels. To approve every plan step on an install automatically, turn on auto approval in the install’s settings. To approve the remaining plan steps in one workflow, click Approve all on that workflow.

Workflow Diffs

If a component using Terraform, Helm or a Kubernetes manifest has been changed by the user, re-synced to an app and therefore re-built, the plan step will visually show the diff, aka the before and after proposed change, and require the user to approve or reject/deny the change. Learn more about Understanding diffs.

A Helm plan, for example, opens with how many resources it will add, change and destroy, then shows the diff of each manifest.

Drift Detection

Drift Detection allows you to automatically identify discrepancies between your defined infrastructure in Nuon and what’s actually running. You can schedule periodic drift checks or manual drift scans from the dashboard. Drilling into the relevant Workflow will show the drift.

To see drift scans in an install’s workflow list, turn on the Drift scan filter. A scan’s plan step lists each drifted resource under Resource drift, with its expected and actual values.