HCP Waypoint is a powerful continuous delivery platform that aims to simplify development release cycles across various environments by abstracting away underlying primitives and toolchain. Using Waypoint as a managed service on the HashiCorp Cloud Platform allows you to manage your application lifecycle without needing to maintain your own Waypoint server infrastructure. In this talk, I will do a walkthrough of Waypoint architecture, what the advantages are compared to other approaches, and how to use managed HCP Waypoint to build and deploy applications with faster feedback loop. Unsurprisingly it’s also using HCL for configuration, which is becoming a standard across the HashiCorp stack. I’ll also do a live demo of building, deploying, and hopefully accessing example application via service URL to different target environments.

2. USING HCP
WAYPOINT_
Marko Bevc

4. ABOUT
ME_ ●
Head of Consultancy at The Scale Factory (B2B SaaS consultancy,
AWS Advanced consulting partner and K8s service provider)
●
Ops background, wearing different hats, engaged with many
different technologies
●
Open source contributor, maintainer and supporter
●
HashiCorp Ambassador, OpenUK Ambassador
●
Certifications and competencies: AWS, CKA, RHEL, HCTA
●
Fan of automation/simplifying things, hiking and travelling
@_MarkoB
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marko-bevc/
| @marko@hachyderm.io

5. WAYPOINT
OSS_
• Simplifying development workflows
• Single point of interaction
• Components: Server, UI, Runners
• It’s contributing to and ensuring:
–Better consistency
–Higher confidence
–Extensible ecosystem
• Abstracting development life-cycle using HCLv2 (IaC)
@_MarkoB

6. DELIVERY
WORKFLOW_
@_MarkoB
waypoint up

7. HCP
PLATFORM_
• Fully managed SaaS platform
• Products: Vault, Consul, Packer, Boundary and
Waypoint (Beta)
• Terraform Cloud is separate
• Cross-cloud unified workflow
• Single button deployments
@_MarkoB

8. HCP
WAYPOINT_
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9. KEY
CONCEPTS_
• Contexts
• Projects
– Application
– Input variables
– Settings: Git repo & sync*
• Runners
• Custom Pipelines*
@_MarkoB

10. project = "deployer"
app "web" {
labels = {
env = "dev"
}
build {
use "docker" {
}
registry {
use "aws-ecr" {
region = var.region
repository = "waypoint"
tag = "latest"
}
}
}
deploy {
use "kubernetes" {
probe_path = "/"
replicas = 1
service_port = 3000
}
}
release {
use "kubernetes" {
load_balancer = true
port = 80
}
}
}
variable "region" {
type = string
#default = "eu-west-1"
env = ["REGION"]
}
waypoint.hcl
@_MarkoB

11. project = "deployer"
app "web" {
labels = {
env = "dev"
}
build {
use "docker" {
}
registry {
use "aws-ecr" {
region = var.region
repository = "waypoint"
tag = "latest"
}
}
}
deploy {
use "kubernetes" {
probe_path = "/"
replicas = 1
service_port = 3000
}
}
release {
use "kubernetes" {
load_balancer = true
port = 80
}
}
}
variable "region" {
type = string
#default = "eu-west-1"
env = ["REGION"]
}
waypoint.hcl
@_MarkoB

12. project = "deployer"
app "web" {
labels = {
env = "dev"
}
build {
use "docker" {
}
registry {
use "aws-ecr" {
region = var.region
repository = "waypoint"
tag = "latest"
}
}
}
deploy {
use "kubernetes" {
probe_path = "/"
replicas = 1
service_port = 3000
}
}
release {
use "kubernetes" {
load_balancer = true
port = 80
}
}
}
variable "region" {
type = string
#default = "eu-west-1"
env = ["REGION"]
}
waypoint.hcl
@_MarkoB

13. project = "deployer"
app "web" {
labels = {
env = "dev"
}
build {
use "docker" {
}
registry {
use "aws-ecr" {
region = var.region
repository = "waypoint"
tag = "latest"
}
}
}
deploy {
use "kubernetes" {
probe_path = "/"
replicas = 1
service_port = 3000
}
}
release {
use "kubernetes" {
load_balancer = true
port = 80
}
}
}
variable "region" {
type = string
#default = "eu-west-1"
env = ["REGION"]
}
waypoint.hcl
@_MarkoB

14. TIME FOR
A DEMO!_
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15. CONCLUSIONS_
& TAKEAWAYS
●
Application delivery is hard! 🧪
●
Key advantages: 🔥
– Flexible, lowers complexity with high level abstraction
– Efficient and well-known manifest – HCLv2 📖
– Managed service – HCP
• Coming up:
– Custom pipelines
– Workflow templates
●
To keep in mind: 🧑‍🏫
– Limited features: no exec, trigger URLs, URL service
– Supported target platforms: Docker, K8s, AWS ECS and Nomad
– Beta: any time updates, no SLA or enterprise support (best effort*)
– https://github.com/hashicorp/waypoint/issues ➡️ ⚒️
@_MarkoB

16. KEEP IN
TOUCH_
https://www.scalefactory.com/
@_MarkoB
@mbevc1
@mbevc1
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marko-bevc/
https://www.scalefactory.com/
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