End-customer view of Distr

As an end customer, you will be given access to a Customer Portal by the software vendor. The portal you will have access to two key features:

• The artifact registry for downloading software distributed by your vendor
• The deployment section for managing applications with Distr agents. Depending on your use case, you might use only one or both of these features.

This guide walks you through using both of the features.

Registry quickstart from the customer portal

A typical onboarding journey looks like this:

1. Access the Customer Portal Dashboard

Here you will view release notes and vendor-specific software information in your dashboard.

2. View Available Artifacts

Browse the artifacts your vendor has made available to you in the artifacts section:

In this example, the vendor made to a single artifact called hello-world available to the end-customer.

3. Explore Artifact Details

Click on the artifact name to see details like available versions, creation date, and a download counter:

4. Authenticate with a Personal Access Token

Generate a Personal Access Token (PAT) in your Distr account and use it to log in:

echo "YOUR-ACCESS-TOKEN" | docker login registry.distr.sh:8585 --password-stdin -u -

5. Pull Vendor Artifacts

Once authenticated, you can pull the artifacts using Docker, ORAS or Helm for example:

Tip

You will find the exact commands in the Customer Portal.

docker pull registry.distr.sh/slug/hello-world:1.0.0
oras pull registry.distr.sh/slug/vendor-artifact:1.0.0
helm pull registry.distr.sh/slug/vendor-helm-chart:1.0.0

6. Deploy the Artifacts

Refer to the deployment instructions in your Customer Portal dashboard or coordinate directly with your vendor for specific deployment guidance.

Deployment Agent quickstart from the customer portal

Step 1: Select Application

Navigate to Deployments in the sidebar and click on the + New Deployment button.

Choose the application you want to deploy.

Step 2: Deployment Configuration

Give your deployment a descriptive name. This name will help you identify and manage the deployment later.

For Helm applications, you’ll also need to specify the Kubernetes namespace where it should be deployed. Make sure the namespace exists in your cluster before proceeding.

Tip

You can also enable cluster-scoped permissions for Helm deployments. When enabled, the agent will have cluster-wide access; otherwise, it will be limited to a specific namespace. See Helm Agent for more details.

Step 3: Application Configuration

Configure the environment variables for your Docker Compose application. These variables will be passed to the docker compose process via the --env-file argument.

The entered environment variables will be passed unmodified to the docker compose process via the --env-file argument. For more information on how to use them, please refer to our guide on working with environment variables.

You can also enable Docker Swarm mode for deployments that should run in swarm mode. See Docker Swarm for more details. Additionally, you can enable container log collection to view application logs directly in the portal. Learn more about Container Logs.

Note

For Helm applications, you’ll configure the Helm values instead. You can adjust the values from the base values file provided by the vendor when creating the application version.

Step 4: Deploy

Review your configuration and click Create Deployment to proceed to the deployment page.

Caution

Important: This command will automatically install the Distr agent, which will then automatically installs the application. The agent runs in the customer environment and manages the full lifecycle of your application deployment.

5. Monitor Deployment Status

View real-time updates as your deployment initializes.

6. Access Environment Logs

Click on the status button to view application logs directly from the portal.

7. Update Deployments

Modify configuration values and update running deployments as needed.

Important Notes

• A single agent can manage multiple deployments in the same target environment
• To remove a deployment, first undeploy it before deletion