Deploy an app locally

This guide starts a complete Podplane cluster in a local QEMU VM and deploys the built-in example web application.

Start the cluster

podplane local start

The first run downloads and caches the VM image, platform dependencies, component images, templates, and seed files. Podplane then creates the VM, waits for Kubernetes to become ready, and configures your kubeconfig context. Later starts reuse the cached dependencies and existing VM.

Check the node:

kubectl get nodes

Deploy the app

podplane deploy web \
  --name hello \
  --hostname hello.default.localhost

The web template supplies a default example image, Service, HTTPS routing, and workload certificate configuration. Open https://hello.default.localhost:4433/ to view the app:

Change the message by deploying the same release again:

podplane deploy web \
  --name hello \
  --hostname hello.default.localhost \
  -e HELLO_MESSAGE="Hello from Podplane"

Inspect and clean up

podplane logs hello
podplane shell hello
podplane remove --name hello
podplane local stop

local stop preserves the VM. Use podplane local delete when you want to remove the VM and its local cluster state.

Next, learn how to configure applications, including secrets and template-specific values.