Create a Project

The project creation process allows you to configure a project, which lifecycle can then be entirely managed and developed through Console areas.

Prerequisites

The first section of this guide allows you to gain the prerequisites needed to create a project. In particular, to create a project, you need to have already set up your Console and configured these three resources:

• Company: A company is the resource which has the governance of all the projects inside it. Each created project starts with the default information (providers, environments, CI/CD integration and cluster information) of its company. To create a company, refers to the create company guide;
• Provider: This will be used by the Console to correctly retrieve the third party service providers needed by your projects. You can create a Git provider by setting up a specific document following the procedure described here. This document will be used by services to correctly retrieve the information about the provider that you use for your projects.
• Template: Repository with pre-filled configurations. Each company could have one or more template. The template allows you to pre-fill resources in your project and start all the similar projects with the same configuration. In short, it constitutes a base on which to create your project. This link to a guide on how to handle project template.

tip

If you are using the PaaS Mia-Platform Console, two main templates are available: one with all the core services, and the other which is similar, but without CMS. More information about how to use them at Setup PaaS Templates.

Once you have provider, company, and template correctly configured, you are able to create a new project.

More information about the creation process can be found in the Project handbook section To create a new project, you must have the permission console.company.project.create.

Creation process

The project creation process is divided into three phases:

1. General information: in this phase, you will be asked to insert general information about your project:

   • Company (required): you are required to select, from a list of pre-configured companies, your company, which enables you to keep the same configuration for different projects;
   • Project name (required): the name of your project, which will be shown in the project card in the Home section of the Console;
   • Description: the description of your project, which will be shown in the project card in the Home section of the Console.

2. Repository configuration: in this phase, you need to choose the project template, and an overview is also presented on the default Git provider configured for the company, which will be inherited by the project:

   • Git repo path: this is the path, calculated from project name and company, where the configuration will be saved on the Git provider. It specifies the location of your project on the Git provider website;
   • Visibility: the visibility states the status of your project once it will be saved on the Git provider. If it is internal, all the internal users of the Git provider instance can see the project. If it is private, only who has access to the repository can see the project;
   • Template (required): you have to select, from a list of pre-configured templates, your template, which enables you to use pre-filled configurations for your project.

caution

At least one Git provider must be configured at the company level in order to create the project.

If there are no configured Git providers for the company, an informative modal is displayed upon clicking the "Next" button in step 1, and you will not be able to continue.

3. Environment configuration: in this phase, you will be asked to insert information about the environments you want to create for your project:
   • Environment name: the name given to your environment;
   • Environment ID: the human-readable ID set to your environment;
   • Host: the host which exposes documentation and APIs;
   • Backoffice Host: the host which exposes CMS and backoffice APIs;
   • Cluster Host: the IP of the Kubernetes cluster where the project will be deployed;
   • Namespace: the namespace taken from Kubernetes;
   • Description: the description of your environment;
   • Secret Manager: the provider configured as a secret manager for the environment;
   • CI/CD Tool: the provider configured as a CI/CD tool for the environment.

Once your project has been created, you will be redirected on the Project Settings area of your new project, where you can see your environments and a list of environment variables:

• Some variables are pre-filled from project or company information (like CMS_IMAGE_NAME, CRUD_LIMIT_CONSTRAINT_ENABLED, and LOG_LEVEL). Other variables are not pre-filled (such as NOTIFICATIONS_COLLECTION_ROUTES and NOTIFICATIONS_SERVICE_PATH);
• All variables are mandatory, except CRUD_LIMIT_CONSTRAINT_ENABLED, NOTIFICATIONS_SERVICE_PATH, and NOTIFICATIONS_COLLECTION_ROUTES: you have to manually configure all the variables that are mandatory and not pre-filled like MONGODB_SHORT_URL, MONGODB_URL, and REDIS_HOSTS.

These environment variables are saved on the Git provider.

The Console automatically tries to create the namespace for each environment in the project, and if the creation is successful it also sets the following labels in the namespace:

Label	Value
mia-platform.eu/company	tenantId
mia-platform.eu/environment	envId
mia-platform.eu/project	projectId

After the project creation phase, you have to commit and deploy your new project to effectively conclude the process.

A note about Project Metrics

When a production environment is defined for a project, a preview of its Kubernetes Metrics will be rendered inside the related card in the Home Page. These metrics will show the following information:

• Environment name;
• Status (healthy, down);
• Number of pods up and running;
• CPU usage;
• RAM usage.

Customize the project with additional information (Optional)

In order to improve the governance of your project, you may want to add additional details such as:

• technologies: the list of technologies used in the project codebase;
• projectOwner and teamContact: the name and contact of the project owner;
• color: a custom color that can be used as an additional categorization, especially if a label has been already defined (e.g. you may decide within your organization that all projects flagged with a gateway are associated with the same color);
• layerId: a label which identifies a logical layer and can help to categorize projects in custom groups (e.g. gateway or data-lake are some samples of logical layer names that can be applied to a project); The layerId must be equal to one of the layer names inside the logicalScopeLayers property of the related tenant object. When the layer is found within the company, the project model is enriched with the logicalScopeLayers property according to the values found;
• logicalScopeLayers: an array of objects shaped as follows:
  • name: identifies the name of the logical layer;
  • order: identifies the numerical order of the layer, in order to display it according to the sorting defined by the user.

layerId and logicalScopeLayers are mutually exclusive, since the former must be used when a tenantId is specified for the project, while the latter must not.

CMS Configurations

All the above properties can be defined via CMS after a project has been created, because they only provide extra information that will be eventually rendered in the Home Page of the Console.

Let's say we have created a project as follows:

{
  "_id": "ObjectId(...)",
  "name": "frontend gateway",
  "projectId": "frontend-gateway",
  "configurationGitPath": "git-config-path",
  "repositoryUrl": "http://example.repository/git-config-path",
  "tenantId": "mia-platform"
}

To configure all the extra details to a project, just add the info, layerId/logicalScopeLayers, and the color properties via the CMS Interface.

Project Information

To add extra info about projectOwner, teamContact, and technologies for a single project, you can simply edit the Information field:

{
  "projectOwner": "John Smith",
  "teamContact": "j.smith@email.it ",
  "technologies": ["java", "node"]
}

Custom Color

To edit the custom color associated with a project, just change the value in the Project Color field:

Layer Identifier (layerId)

If the project has a tenantId that includes a definition for its logicalScopeLayers, then the Layer Identifier field can be defined by simply specifying a layer name that exists in the related logicalScopeLayers:

Logical scope layer (logicalScopeLayers)

Alternatively to the above step, if the project isn't under a tenantId, then logicalScopeLayers can be defined directly by editing the Logical Scope Layer field:

At the end of the configuration, on the backend side, the project will have the following data structure:

Monitoring

monitoring: object which describes the monitoring tools supported by the project. For example:

{
  "systems": [
    {
      "type": "prometheus-operator"
    }
  ]
}

• type: so far, only one type of monitoring system is supported: prometheus-operator.

In case type is set to prometheus-operator, you will be able to configure the creation of the service monitor for your microservices. More information about this feature here.

Custom Docker Image Pull imagePullSecret

You can configure custom Image Pull Secrets by configuring the imagePullSecretNames property, it contains a list of names that will be used in deployment and cronjob files for pulling docker images.

Sample of project data structure

{
  "_id": "ObjectId(...)",
  "name": "frontend gateway",
  "projectId": "frontend-gateway",
  "configurationGitPath": "git-congif-path",
  "repositoryUrl": "http://example.repository/git-config-path",
  "tenantId": "mia-platform",
  "info": {
    "projectOwner": "John Smith",
    "teamContact": "john.smith@email.com",
    "technologies": ["javascript", "dockerfile", "shell"]
  },
  "layerId": "gateway",
  "color": "green"
}

When loading the Home Page of the Console, the project Frontend Gateway will be rendered accordingly:

Setup PaaS templates

If you are using the PaaS Console, the following templates are available:

• Mia-Platform Basic Project Template: it contains an empty project exposed with Traefik Ingress with Kustomize project structure;
• Basic Project Template without IngressRoute: it contains an empty project not exposed.

A project created with one of these templates is ready to use. You could start creating a new service from the Marketplace.

Configure Security Features

From the CMS page it is possible to configure a set of security features in order to enrich the configuration of your project.

Those features are all set to true by default and can be switched off for testing or to account for compatibility issues, by managing the properties of the securityFeatures key.

{
  "seccompProfile": { "type": "boolean" },
  "appArmor": { "type": "boolean" },
  "hostProperties": { "type": "boolean" },
  "privilegedPod": { "type": "boolean" }
}

Head over to the security features documentation to better understand which capabilities are implemented.