Build Designs
Task guides for the work you do on the Kanvas canvas - placing and configuring components, connecting them, annotating a design, and organizing your workspace.
How-to Guides
Task guides for building, managing, validating, deploying, sharing, and operating Kanvas designs.
Each guide accomplishes one task for a reader who already knows the basics. If you are new to Kanvas, start with Getting Started. If you want the reasoning behind a behavior, read Concepts. For exact options, limits, and shortcuts, use Reference.
Every action in these guides runs under your permissions. Kanvas hides or disables an action your role does not allow. Validating, deploying, and undeploying a design also need a Meshery you run, because the hosted kanvas.new site does not run them. How Kanvas Works with Meshery and Layer5 Cloud lists what each environment supports.
Build designs 🔗
Tasks you perform on the canvas. See Build Designs for the group.
| Goal | Guide |
|---|---|
| Add components, edit their configuration, lock, duplicate, copy, and paste them | Add and Configure Components |
| Connect components and remove connections | Create Relationships |
| Draw, label, and annotate a design | Whiteboard on the Canvas |
| Keep frequently used models within reach | Pin Models to the Dock |
| Group components by shared labels | Work with Tags |
Manage designs 🔗
| Goal | Guide |
|---|---|
| Bring in a manifest, Helm chart, Compose file, or design | Importing a Design |
| Combine two designs, or open one in place of the canvas | Merging and Loading Designs |
| Understand and control how work is saved | Saving Designs |
| Start from an existing design | Cloning a Design |
| Back up a design or use it offline | Exporting Designs |
| Show a design on another site | Embedding Designs |
| Make a design available in the catalog | Publishing Designs |
| Remove a design permanently | Deleting a Design |
Validate and deploy 🔗
Run the steps in this order. Validation catches configuration errors in the design, a dry run checks the design against the target clusters, and a deployment applies it.
| Goal | Guide |
|---|---|
| Check a design’s configuration | Validating Designs |
| Simulate a deployment without changes | Dry Running a Design |
| Apply a design to one or more clusters | Deploying Designs |
| Roll a deployment back | Undeploying Designs |
Collaborate and review 🔗
| Goal | Guide |
|---|---|
| Give other people access to a design | Sharing Designs |
| Discuss a design with comments | Reviewing Designs |
Visualize pull requests and charts 🔗
| Goal | Guide |
|---|---|
| Post an infrastructure snapshot on a GitHub pull request | Kanvas GitHub Snapshot |
| Render a snapshot of a Helm chart | Helm Kanvas Snapshot |
Operate infrastructure 🔗
| Goal | Guide |
|---|---|
| Open a shell in a running container | Interactive Terminal |
| Follow a container’s logs | Log Streaming |
| Measure a running service | Performance Testing in Operator |
Fix problems 🔗
| Goal | Guide |
|---|---|
| Diagnose and resolve a Kanvas problem | Troubleshooting Kanvas |
Recent Discussions on Kanvas
- Jul 12 | Unleash Visual Power: Import Your Configs by zihan kuang
- Oct 14 | Explore Meshery's Published Relationship Design Examples by Awani Alero
- Oct 03 | Design Review RFC: Kanvas Empty State Enhancement by Lee Calcote
- Jul 19 | [For Discussion] Visual indication of semantically vs non-semantically meaningful Meshery components by Lee Calcote
- Jun 07 | What are the conditions for a "System is unhealthy" warning? by James
- May 30 | Looking for a meshmate to help with first PR by Faisal Imtiyaz123
- Feb 28 | For Discussion: Capturing potential, but unrealized Relationships in Design Snapshots by Lee Calcote
- Feb 12 | Hint on Scaling & Verifying Cronjob in Playground by Sandra Ashipala