multi-template/

Multi-Template Demo

This demo shows that two different actor templates running two different binaries can share a single WorkerPool — even when the templates live in different atespaces.

Each template gates on the pool via workerSelector, a label selector matched against the pool's labels — pool selection is cluster-wide, not scoped by atespace or namespace.

Prerequisites

• A k8s cluster with Agent Substrate installed (./hack/install-ate.sh --deploy-ate-system).
• ko installed for building images.
• A GCS bucket for storing snapshots (configured via BUCKET_NAME env var).

How to Run on Agent Substrate

1. Build and Deploy

[!NOTE] Do not manually edit the demos/multi-template/*.yaml.tmpl manifests. The installation script automatically injects your ${BUCKET_NAME} environment variable during deployment.

./hack/install-ate.sh --deploy-demo-multi-template

This command will:

• Build the counter and fspersist images using ko.
• Create one WorkerPool (shared-pool) in the ate-demo-multi-template-pool namespace (multi-template.yaml.tmpl).
• Create 2 atespaces — ate-demo-multi-template-counter and ate-demo-multi-template-fspersist — and an actor template in each: counter (counter-template.yaml.tmpl) and fspersist (fspersist-template.yaml.tmpl), both selecting the pool via the same workerSelector label and applied with kubectl ate create actor-template.
• Wait until both templates' golden snapshots are built.

2. Create one actor per template

Each actor goes in its template's atespace — --template-ref names the template, resolved in the actor's atespace — and their DNS names embed that atespace:

# Install the CLI as a kubectl plugin if not already installed
go install ./cmd/kubectl-ate

# Create two actors from different templates, one per atespace.
kubectl ate create actor c1 -a ate-demo-multi-template-counter --template-ref counter
kubectl ate create actor f1 -a ate-demo-multi-template-fspersist --template-ref fspersist

3. Port-forward the atenet router

To interact with the router locally:

kubectl port-forward -n ate-system svc/atenet-router 8000:80

How to Use

When you send an HTTP request through the router, Substrate automatically detects the session, activates (resumes) the actor onto an available worker pod, and proxies the traffic.

# counter binary
curl -s -H "Host: c1.ate-demo-multi-template-counter.actors.resources.substrate.ate.dev" http://localhost:8000
# -> hello from: <ip> | preserved memory count: 1

# fspersist binary
curl -s -H "Host: f1.ate-demo-multi-template-fspersist.actors.resources.substrate.ate.dev" http://localhost:8000
# -> pod: <ip>
#    --- history ---
#    pod=<ip> | count=0 | time=<timestamp>

Confirm both actors landed on workers in the one shared-pool:

kubectl ate get workers

The counter increments its in-memory count on each request, while fspersist prepends a line to its history file on each request. Suspending and re-requesting an actor preserves that state across the snapshot/restore cycle:

kubectl ate suspend actor f1 -a ate-demo-multi-template-fspersist
curl -s -H "Host: f1.ate-demo-multi-template-fspersist.actors.resources.substrate.ate.dev" http://localhost:8000  # history persists; count keeps climbing

How to Uninstall

Remove the demo — this deletes the actors (suspending running ones first), the templates, both atespaces, and then the pool and its namespace:

./hack/install-ate.sh --delete-demo-multi-template