bosh-release.html.md.erb

---
title: BOSH Releases
owner: Services
---


This topic provides resources for creating a BOSH release that integrates a
software service with <%= vars.platform_name %> at the managed service level.

## <a id="overview"></a> Overview

A BOSH release is a directory that contains the source code for your service
along with everything else that BOSH needs to deploy it reproducibly to cloud VMs
running a specified operating system (stemcell). These contents include but are
not limited to buildpacks, start up scripts, binary artifacts, and a BOSH
manifest containing configuration and deployment properties.

The BOSH manifest specifies the following major components:

- **Packages** that can be installed on <%= vars.platform_name %> stemcells to create VM
images

- **Jobs** that describe how to install, run, and remove your software

- A **Monitor** script, that describes how to monitor the health of your
service components and stop or restart them

## <a id="resources"></a> BOSH Resources

These topics give more details on BOSH and BOSH releases:

- [BOSH Documentation](http://bosh.io/docs) is the top-level contents page for
BOSH documentation.

- [BOSH Problem Statement](http://bosh.io/docs/problems.html) explains what BOSH
does.

- [BOSH Basic Workflow](http://bosh.io/docs/basic-workflow.html) lists the
high-level steps for creating a BOSH deployment.

## <a id="create"></a>Creating a BOSH Release

These topics explain how to create a BOSH release:

- [Creating a Release](http://bosh.io/docs/create-release.html)

- [Defining your Jobs](http://bosh.io/docs/jobs.html)

- [Defining your VMs](http://bosh.io/docs/vm-struct.html)

- [Defining your Runtime Configs](https://bosh.io/docs/runtime-config.html)

- [Monitoring the Health of your Service](http://bosh.io/docs/monitoring.html)

## <a id="docker"></a>Shortcut: Start with Docker Images

If you have already packaged your service as Docker images, you can emulate
a managed service deployment using the [Tile Generator](tile-generator.html)'s
support for `docker-bosh` packages. This feature lets you deploy pre-existing
Docker images into BOSH-managed VMs on the <%= vars.platform_name %> infrastructure.

While this is a great, easy way to deploy your service on <%= vars.platform_name %>, we do not
recommend this as a long-term, production-ready solution. There is really no
benefit of running your service in containers on the VMs, and it does have
a number of operational ("day 2") drawbacks:

- You introduce more software (Docker) which needs to be kept up-to-date, and
has the potential for issues, downtime, and security vulnerabilities.

- You can no longer take advantage of the patching capabilities of <%= vars.platform_name %> for
stemcells and application dependencies, such as frameworks and libraries. Instead,
you become directly responsible for managing all software that is in the Docker
images you deploy.

## <a id="enhancing"></a>Enhancing the BOSH Release

After the basic BOSH release is in place, additional features for logging
help operators run the service. For logging information, see
[syslog-release](https://github.com/cloudfoundry/syslog-release).
<%= vars.company_name %> recommends you expose the property `syslog.migration.disabled` using the
tile's forms because not all customers configure syslog draining.

Logs written under the expected BOSH location `/var/vcap/sys/log` are forwarded
to the configured syslog server by the release.
Integrating syslog forwarding into a tile should not require code changes;
it only requires including the release and configuration forms in the `tile.yml`.
For an example, see [pcf-examples/tile-for-bosh-with-syslog](https://github.com/cf-platform-eng/pcf-examples/tree/master/tile-for-bosh-with-syslog).

## <a id="backup"></a>BOSH Backup and Restore

The [BOSH Backup and Restore Developer's Guide](https://docs.cloudfoundry.org/bbr/bbr-devguide.html)
describes the framework for release authors to add backup and restore functionality
to their release by using BOSH Backup and Restore (BBR).