Sharing service instances

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Here are instructions for sharing service instances in your Cloud Foundry apps.

About service instance sharing

Sharing a service instance among multiple spaces and across orgs allows apps to share databases, messaging queues, and other types of services. This eliminates the need for development teams to use service keys and user-provided services to bind their apps to the same service instance that was provisioned using the cf create-service command. Sharing service instances improves security and auditing, and provides a more intuitive user experience.

  • Developers and administrators can share service instances between spaces in which they have the Space Developer role.

  • Developers who have a service instance shared with them can only bind and unbind apps to that service instance. They cannot update, rename, or delete it.

  • Developers who have a service instance shared with them can view the values of any configuration parameters that were used to provision or update the service instance.

For example, if two development teams have apps in their own spaces, and both apps want to send messages to each other using a messaging queue:

  1. The development team in space A can create a new instance of a messaging queue service, bind it to their app, and share that service instance into space B.

  2. A developer in space B can then bind their app to the same service instance, and the two apps can begin publishing and receiving messages from one another.

Activating service instance sharing in Cloud Foundry

To activate service instance sharing, the platform operator must activate the service_instance_sharing flag in Cloud Foundry.

$ cf enable-feature-flag service_instance_sharing

Sharing a service instance

You can share a service instance from one space to another if you have the Space Developer role in both spaces.

To share a service instance to another space, run the following Cloud Foundry Command Line Interface (cf CLI) command:

$ cf share-service SERVICE-INSTANCE -s OTHER-SPACE [-o OTHER-ORG]

  • You cannot share a service instance into a space where a service instance with the same name already exists.

  • To share a service instance into a space, the space must have access to the service and service plan of the service instance that you are sharing. Run the cf enable-service-access command to set this access.

  • If you no longer have access to the service or service plan used to create your service instance, you cannot share that service instance.

Get information about service instance sharing

To get information about service instance sharing on the originating space, run the following cf CLI command from that originating space:

cf service SERVICE-INSTANCE-NAME

For example:

$ cf service mydb

name:             mydb
service:          p-mysql
tags:
plan:             100mb
description:      mysql databases on demand been created by a platform.
documentation:
dashboard:
service broker:   mysql-broker

shared with spaces:
org        space        bindings
org-1      space-1      0
org-1      space-2      2

Showing status of last operation from service my-service-3...

status:    create succeeded
message:   Operation succeeded
started:   2021-03-01T15:10:15Z
updated:   2021-03-01T15:10:17Z

bound apps:
name              binding name   status             message
my-music-app                     create succeeded   Operation succeeded

No upgrade available for this service.
  • For each of the spaces, the service instance is shared into the output. The output shows the number of bindings to apps of the service instance in that space.
  • When the service instance is not shared, This service is not currently shared appears instead of shared with spaces.

If you run the command while targeting the space where the service instance is shared, you see the originating space and organization.

For example:

$ cf service mydb

name:                     mydb
shared from org/space:    acceptance / dev
service:                  p-mysql
tags:
plan:                     100mb
description:              mysql databases on demand been created by a platform.
documentation:
dashboard:
service broker:           mysql-broker

Showing status of last operation from service my-service-3...

status:    create succeeded
message:   Operation succeeded
started:   2021-03-01T15:10:15Z
updated:   2021-03-01T15:10:17Z

bound apps:
name              binding name   status             message
my-library-app                   create succeeded   Operation succeeded

No upgrade available for this service.

In this case, no information about other spaces is exposed.

Unsharing a service instance

Unsharing a service instance deletes all bindings to apps in the spaces it was shared into. This might cause apps to fail. Before unsharing a service instance, run the cf service SERVICE-INSTANCE command to find out how many bindings exist in the spaces the service instance is shared into.

You can unshare a service instance if you have the Space Developer role in the space where this service instance was shared from.

Developers cannot delete or rename a service instance until it is unshared from all spaces.

To unshare a service instance, run the following cf CLI command:

$ cf unshare-service SERVICE-INSTANCE -s OTHER-SPACE [-o OTHER-ORG] [-f]

The -f flag (optional) forces unsharing without confirmation.

Security considerations

  • Service keys cannot be created from a space that a service instance is shared into. This ensures that developers in the space where a service instance is shared from have visibility into where and how many times the service instance is used.

  • Sharing service instances does not update app security groups (ASGs). The network policies defined in your ASGs might need to be updated to ensure that apps using shared service instances can access the underlying service.

  • Access to a service must be activated using the cf enable-service-access command for a service instance to be shared into a space.

  • Not all services are activated for sharing the instances capability. Contact the service vendor directly if you are unable to share instances of their service. If you are a service author, see Enabling service instance sharing.

Deactivating service instance sharing in Cloud Foundry

To deactivate service instance sharing, run:

$ cf disable-feature-flag service_instance_sharing

This only prevents new shares from being created. To remove existing shares, see Deleting all shares.

Deleting all shares

The following script finds all service instances that are shared, and for each space that the service instance is shared into, all service bindings to that service instance are deleted, and all shares are deleted.

If a service binding is not deleted, the script continues trying to unshare subsequent service instances.

To use this script, you must be logged in as an administrator and have jq installed.

This script was tested on macOS Sierra 10.12.4 and Ubuntu 14.04.5. Use the script at your own risk.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -u
set -e

# refresh auth token
cf oauth-token >/dev/null

for instance_guid in $(cf curl /v3/service_instances | jq -r '.resources[].guid'); do
  for space_guid in $(cf curl /v2/service_instances/$instance_guid/shared_to | jq -r
'.resources[].space_guid'); do
    echo "Unsharing service instance $instance_guid from space $space_guid"

    set +e
    cf curl -X DELETE "/v3/service_instances/$instance_guid/relationships/shared_spaces/$space_guid"
    set -e
  done
done
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