Applications

How Kowan groups containers into workloads (deployments, Compose stacks and single containers) and how to find, check and operate them across hosts.

Kowan does not make you think in containers. It groups them into workloads, the applications you actually run: a Compose stack, a deployment Kowan manages, or a single container on its own. The Workloads page lists every workload on every host, with the ones that need attention first.

Kinds of workload

Kowan builds the list from what Docker reports, so containers and stacks you started outside Kowan appear too, with no setup.

Deployment

A workload Kowan manages: a Compose stack or a single container you deployed from Kowan, from an editor, a template or a Git repository. Kowan stores its configuration, keeps every change as a revision and, unless you pause auto-heal, redeploys it when its containers go missing or stop. See Deployments.

Compose stack

Containers that share a Docker Compose project, or a Docker Swarm stack, started outside Kowan. Kowan finds them by the labels Docker Compose and Swarm put on their containers. A Swarm service outside any stack is one workload too.

Single container

A container that belongs to no stack and no deployment.

On the Workloads page, the Managed tab lists deployments and Not managed lists everything else. Branch and pull request previews are deployments, marked as previews.

Browse workloads

Go to Workloads. The host picker at the top of the sidebar sets the scope: one host, or All hosts.

• Tabs: All, Managed and Not managed.
• Filters: Needs you (something is wrong), Updates (a newer image is available) and Public (a port is published on every network interface of the host).
• View: Cards or Table. In the table, expand a workload to see its services and their containers.

In the card view, workloads that need attention come first under Needs you, followed by The rest. Hosts that are offline are listed at the top, and their workloads appear under Last known, showing their last known configuration.

To find a workload quickly from anywhere, press ⌘K (Ctrl+K) and type part of its name.

Workload states

Each workload shows one state, worked out from its containers:

When a workload needs you, its card says why, such as backend is missing or api exited with code 1.

A container that exits with an error code counts as crashed, unless it was stopped on purpose. Kowan tells the two apart by the restart policy: Docker restarts a crashed container whose policy is always or unless-stopped, so one that stays down was stopped. A start error, the policy no and an on-failure policy that ran out of retries are crashes.

Containers that Swarm replaced during an update are shown as Replaced and do not count against the workload.

Open a workload

Click a workload to open its page. The header shows its state, host, kind, source, what it exposes and when it was created, with actions on the right:

• View logs.
• Actions: start and stop the whole workload. For a stack or a single container, it also restarts it and opens each container's page. For a deployment, it holds Deploy or Redeploy, Auto-heal and Deletion protection, among others; see Deployments.
• Update · N, when N services have a newer image: updates them all at once. See Image updates.
• New versions · N, for a deployment pinned to version tags: lists newer tags of the same shape.

The page has these tabs:

Overview

The containers, grouped by service, with their state, image and ports. Each container has buttons for its logs, its console and its page, and a menu to start, stop, restart, pause, kill or remove it. For a deployment, each service has a Replicas control. Below, Resources charts CPU, memory and network over time (see Resource history), and Automation & access sums up the workload's policies.

Logs

Live logs of every container, and the Keep logs setting that stores them so you can search them later. See Logs.

Configuration, Compose or Config

For a deployment, the editable configuration. For a stack Kowan does not manage, a read-only view of its services as Docker reports them, with its Compose project and, when Docker reports them, its files and folder on the host. For a single container, its settings.

History

Deployments only: every revision, with diffs and rollback. See Revisions and rollback.

Policies

The workload's automation: Updates, Backups, Schedule and Exposure. See Image updates, Volume backups, Schedules and Exposure and HTTPS.

Activity

What happened to the workload: Docker events, and for a deployment its deploys and changes.

Manage a stack Kowan does not manage

Kowan shows and operates stacks started elsewhere: you can start, stop and restart them, read their logs and handle each container. It cannot edit them, because it does not have their Compose file.

To manage one fully, import it: Workloads → New workload → Import stacks reads stacks from Portainer or a folder of Compose files. A stack imported under its Compose project name takes over the containers that already run. See Importing stacks.

Who can do what

Viewers see workloads, their state and their logs. Starting, stopping, deploying and every other change need the operator role. Teams can be limited to some hosts and workloads. See Users and roles.

Kowan's own containers

The Kowan server, its agents and the short-lived helpers they start (for updates, scans, volume browsing and backups) are hidden from Workloads, the Overview, Logs and search. To show them, an admin turns on Kowan's own containers in Settings → General → Features.

Related

• Containers: work with a single container.
• Deployments: create and change deployments.
• Container labels: set policies from a Compose file.