Step 5: Create a Customer

After promoting the first release for the cli-tutorial application, create a customer so that you can install the application.

A customer is an object in the vendor portal that represents a single licensed user of your application. When you create a customer, you define entitlement information for the user, and the vendor portal generates a YAML license file for the customer that you can download.

When you install the application later in this tutorial, you will upload the license file that you create in this step to allow KOTS to create the application containers.

To create a customer and download the license file:

From the replicated-cli-tutorial directory, create a license for a customer named Some-Big-Bank that is assigned to the Unstable channel and expires in 10 days:
```
replicated customer create \
  --name "Some-Big-Bank" \
  --expires-in "240h" \
  --channel "Unstable"
```
The Unstable channel is the channel where you promoted the release in Step 4: Create a Release. Assigning the customer to a channel allows them to install the releases that are promoted to that channel.

Example output:
```
ID                             NAME             CHANNELS     EXPIRES                          TYPE
2GuB3VYLjU5t9vNDK6byjgiTKUs    Some-Big-Bank    Unstable     2022-11-10 14:59:49 +0000 UTC    dev
```

Verify the customer creation details:

replicated customer ls

Example output:

ID                             NAME             CHANNELS     EXPIRES                          TYPE
2GuB3VYLjU5t9vNDK6byjgiTKUs    Some-Big-Bank    Unstable     2022-11-10 14:59:49 +0000 UTC    dev

Download the license file for the customer that you just created:

replicated customer download-license \
  --customer "Some-Big-Bank"

The license downloads to stdout.

Example output:

apiVersion: kots.io/v1beta1
kind: License
metadata:
  name: some-big-bank
spec:
  appSlug: cli-tutorial
  channelID: 2GmYFUFzj8JOSLYw0jAKKJKFua8
  channelName: Unstable
  customerName: Some-Big-Bank
  endpoint: https://replicated.app
  entitlements:
    expires_at:
      description: License Expiration
      title: Expiration
      value: "2022-11-10T14:59:49Z"
      valueType: String
  isNewKotsUiEnabled: true
  licenseID: 2GuB3ZLQsU38F5SX3n03x8qBzeL
  licenseSequence: 1
  licenseType: dev
  signature: eyJsaW...

Rename the license file and save it to your Desktop folder:

export LICENSE_FILE=~/Desktop/Some-Big-Bank-${REPLICATED_APP}-license.yaml
replicated customer download-license --customer "Some-Big-Bank" > "${LICENSE_FILE}"

Verify that the license was written properly using either cat or head:

head ${LICENSE_FILE}

Example output:

apiVersion: kots.io/v1beta1
kind: License
metadata:
  name: some-big-bank
spec:
  appSlug: cli-tutorial
  channelID: 2GmYFUFzj8JOSLYw0jAKKJKFua8
  channelName: Unstable
  customerName: Some-Big-Bank
  endpoint: https://replicated.app

Next Step

Continue to Step 6: Install KOTS and the Application to get the installation commands from the Unstable channel, then install the KOTS components and the sample application in your cluster.

Step 5: Create a Customer

Next Step​

Next Step