Category: automation

GitOps with Weaveworks Flux

If you have ever deployed applications to Kubernetes or other platforms, you are probably used to the following approach:

  • developers check in code which triggers CI (continuous integration) and eventually results in deployable artifacts
  • a release process deploys the artifacts to one or more environments such as a development and a production environment

In the case of Kubernetes, the artifact is usually a combination of a container image and a Helm chart. The release process then authenticates to the Kubernetes cluster and deploys the artifacts. Although this approach works, I have always found this deployment process overly complicated with many release pipelines configured to trigger on specific conditions.

What if you could store your entire cluster configuration in a git repository as the single source of truth and use simple git operations (is there such a thing? šŸ˜) to change your configuration? Obviously, you would need some extra tooling that synchronizes the configuration with the cluster, which is exactly what Weaveworks Flux is designed to do. Also check the Flux git repo.

In this post, we will run through a simple example to illustrate the functionality. We will do the following over two posts:

Post one:

  • Create a git repo for our configuration
  • Install Flux and use the git repo as our configuration source
  • Install an Ingress Controller with a Helm chart

Post two:

  • Install an application using standard YAML (including ingress definition)
  • Update the application automatically when a new version of the application image is available

Let’s get started!

Create a git repository

To keep things simple, make sure you have an account on GitHub and create a new repository. You can also clone my demo repository. To clone it, use the following command:

git clone https://github.com/gbaeke/gitops-sample.git

Note: if you clone my repo and use it in later steps, the resources I defined will get created automatically; if you want to follow the steps, use your own empty repo

Install Flux

Flux needs to be installed on Kubernetes, so make sure you have a cluster at your disposal. In this post, I use Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS). Make sure kubectl points to that cluster. If you have kubectl installed, obtain the credentials to the cluster with the Azure CLI and then run kubectl get nodes or kubectl cluster-info to make sure you are connected to the right cluster.

az aks get-credentials -n CLUSTER_NAME -g RESOURCE_GROUP

It is easy to install Flux with Helm and in this post, I will use Helm v3 which is currently in beta. You will need to install Helm v3 on your system. I installed it in Windows 10’s Ubuntu shell. Use the following command to download and unpack it:

curl -sSL "https://get.helm.sh/helm-v3.0.0-beta.3-linux-amd64.tar.gz" | tar xvz

This results in a folder linux-amd64 which contains the helm executable. Make the file executable with chmod +x and copy it to your path as helmv3. Next, run helmv3. You should see the help text:

The Kubernetes package manager
 
Common actions for Helm:

- helm search:    search for charts
- helm fetch:     download a chart to your local directory to view
- helm install:   upload the chart to Kubernetes
- helm list:      list releases of charts 
...

Now you are ready to install Flux. First, add the FLux Helm repository to allow helmv3 to find the chart:

helmv3 repo add fluxcd https://charts.fluxcd.io

Create a namespace for Flux:

kubectl create ns flux

Install Flux in the namespace with Helm v3:

helmv3 upgrade -i flux fluxcd/flux --wait \
 --namespace flux \
 --set registry.pollInterval=1m \
 --set git.pollInterval=1m \
 --set git.url=git@github.com:GITHUBUSERNAME/gitops-sample

The above command upgrades Flux but installs it if it is missing (-i). The chart to install is fluxcd/flux. With –wait, we wait until the installation is finished. We will not go into the first two –set options for now. The last option defines the git repository Flux should use to sync the configuration to the cluster. Currently, Flux supports one repository. Because we use a public repository, Flux can easily read its contents. At times, Flux needs to update the git repository. To support that, you can add a deploy key to the repository. First, install the fluxctl tool:

curl -sL https://fluxcd.io/install | sh
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.fluxcd/bin

Now run the following commands to obtain the public key to use as deploy key:

export FLUX_FORWARD_NAMESPACE=flux
fluxctl identity

The output of the command is something like:

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAA...

Copy and paste this key as a deploy key for your github repo:

git repo deploy key

Phew… Flux should now be installed on your cluster. Time to install some applications to the cluster from the git repo.

Note: Flux also supports private repos; it just so happens I used a public one here

Install an Ingress Controller

Let’s try to install Traefik via its Helm chart. Since I am not using traditional CD with pipelines that run helm commands, we will need something else. Luckily, there’s a Flux Helm Operator that allows us to declaratively install Helm charts. The Helm Operator installs a Helm chart when it detects a custom resource definition (CRD) of type helm.fluxcd.io/v1. Let’s first create the CRD for Helm v3:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fluxcd/helm-operator/helm-v3/deploy/flux-helm-release-crd.yaml

Next, install the operator:

helmv3 upgrade -i helm-operator fluxcd/helm-operator --wait \
 --namespace fluxcd \
 --set git.ssh.secretName=flux-git-deploy \
 --set git.pollInterval=1m \
 --set chartsSyncInterval=1m \
 --set configureRepositories.enable=true \
 --set configureRepositories.repositories[0].name=stable \
 --set configureRepositories.repositories[0].url=https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com \
 --set extraEnvs[0].name=HELM_VERSION \
 --set extraEnvs[0].value=v3 \
 --set image.repository=docker.io/fluxcd/helm-operator-prerelease \
 --set image.tag=helm-v3-71bc9d62

You didn’t think I found the above myself did you? šŸ˜ It’s from an excellent tutorial here.

When the operator is installed, you should be able to install Traefik with the following YAML:

apiVersion: helm.fluxcd.io/v1
kind: HelmRelease
metadata:
  name: traefik
  namespace: default
  annotations:
    fluxcd.io/ignore: "false"
spec:
  releaseName: traefik
  chart:
    repository: https://kubernetes-charts.storage.googleapis.com/
    name: traefik
    version: 1.78.0
  values:
    serviceType: LoadBalancer
    rbac:
      enabled: true
    dashboard:
      enabled: true

Just add the above YAML to the GitHub repository. I added it to the ingress folder:

traefik.yaml added to the GitHub repo

If you wait a while, or run fluxctl sync, the repo gets synced and the resources created. When the helm.fluxcd.io/v1 object is created, the Helm Operator will install the chart in the default namespace. Traefik will be exposed via an Azure Load Balancer. You can check the release with the following command:

kubectl get helmreleases.helm.fluxcd.io

NAME      RELEASE   STATUS     MESSAGE                  AGE
traefik   traefik   deployed   helm install succeeded   15m

Also check that the Traefik pod is created in the default namespace (only 1 replica; the default):

kubectl get po

NAME                       READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
traefik-86f4c5f9c9-gcxdb   1/1     Running   0          21m

Also check the public IP of Traefik:

kubectl get svc
 
NAME                TYPE           CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP 
traefik             LoadBalancer   10.0.8.59      41.44.245.234

We will later use that IP when we define the ingress for our web application.

Conclusion

In this post, you learned a tiny bit about GitOps with WeaveWorks Flux. The concept is simple enough: store your cluster config in a git repo as the single source of truth and use git operations to initiate (or rollback) cluster operations. To start, we simply installed Traefik via the Flux Helm Operator. In a later post, we will add an application and look at image management. There’s much more you can do so stay tuned!

AKS Managed Pod Identity and access to Azure Storage

When you need to access Azure Storage (or other Azure resources) from a container in AKS (Kubernetes on Azure), you have many options. You can put credentials in your code (nooooo!), pass credentials via environment variables, use Kubernetes secrets, obtain secrets from Key Vault and so on. Usually, the credentials are keys but you can also connect to a Storage Account with an Azure AD account. Instead of a regular account, you can use a managed identity that you set up specifically for the purpose of accessing the storage account or a specific container.

A managed identity is created as an Azure resource and will appear in the resource group where it was created:

User assigned managed identity

This managed identity can be created from the Azure Portal but also with the Azure CLI:

az identity create -g storage-aad-rg -n demo-pod-id -o json

The managed identity can subsequently be granted access rights, for instance, on a storage account. Storage accounts now also support Azure AD accounts (in preview). You can assign roles such as Blob Data Reader, Blob Data Contributor and Blob Data Owner. The screenshot below shows the managed identity getting the Blob Data Reader role on the entire storage account:

Granting the managed identity access to a storage account

When you want to use this specific identity from a Kubernetes pod, you can use the aad-pod-identity project. Note that this is an open source project and that it is not quite finished. The project’s README contains all the instructions you need but here are the highlights:

  • Deploy the infrastructure required to support managed identities in pods; these are the MIC and NMI containers plus some custom resource definitions (CRDs)
  • Assign the AKS service principle the role of ManagedĀ IdentityĀ Operator over the scope of the managed identity created above (you would use the resource id of the managed identity in the scope such as Ā /subscriptions/YOURSUBID/resourcegroups/YOURRESOURCEGROUP/providers/Microsoft.ManagedIdentity/userAssignedIdentities/YOURMANAGEDIDENTITY
  • Define the pod identity via the AzureIdentity custom resource definition (CRD); in the YAML file you will refer to the managed identity by its resource id (/subscr…) and client id
  • Define the identity binding via the AzureIdentityBinding custom resource definition (CRD); in the YAML file you will setup a selector that you will use later in a pod definition to associate the managed identity with the pod; I defined a selector called myapp

Here is the identity definition (uses one of the CRDs defined earlier):

apiVersion: "aadpodidentity.k8s.io/v1"
kind: AzureIdentity
metadata:
   name: aks-pod-id
spec:
  type: 0
  ResourceID:  /subscriptions/SUBID/resourcegroups/RESOURCEGROUP/providers/Microsoft.ManagedIdentity/userAssignedIdentities/demo-pod-id
   ClientID: c35040d0-f73c-4c4e-a376-9bb1c5532fda

And here is the binding that defines the selector (other CRD defined earlier):

apiVersion: "aadpodidentity.k8s.io/v1"
kind: AzureIdentityBinding
metadata:
  name: aad-identity-binding
spec:
  AzureIdentity: aks-pod-id
  Selector: myapp

Note that the installation of the infrastructure containers depends on RBAC being enabled or not. To check if RBAC is enabled on your AKS cluster, you can use https://resources.azure.com and search for your cluster. Check for the enableRBAC. In my cluster, RBAC was enabled:

Yep, RBAC enabled so make sure you use the RBAC YAML files

With everything configured, we can spin up a container with a label that matches the selector defined earlier:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: ubuntu
  labels:
    aadpodidbinding: myapp
spec:
  containers:
    name: ubuntu
    image: ubuntu:latest
    command: [ "/bin/bash", "-c", "--"]
    args: [ "while true; do sleep 30; done;"]

Save the above to a file called ubuntu.yaml and use kubectlĀ applyĀ -fĀ ubuntu.yaml to launch the pod. The pod will keep running because of the forever while loop. The pod can use the managed identity because of the aadpodidbinding label of myapp. Next, get a shell to the container:

kubectl exec -it ubuntu /bin/bash

To check if it works, we have to know how to obtain an access token (which is a JWT or JSON Web Token). We can obtain it via curl. First use apt-getĀ update and then use apt-getĀ installĀ curl to install it. Then issue the following command to obtain a token for https://azure.storage.com:

curl 'http://169.254.169.254/metadata/identity/oauth2/token?api-version=2018-02-01&resource=https%3A%2F%2Fstorage.azure.com%2F' -H Metadata:true -s

TIP: if you are not very familiar with curl, use https://curlbuilder.com. As a precaution, do not paste your access token in the command builder.

The request to 169.254.169.254 goes to the Azure Instance Metadata Service which provides, among other things, an API to obtain a token. The result will be in the following form:

{"access_token":"THE ACTUAL ACCESS TOKEN","refresh_token":"", "expires_in":"28800","expires_on":"1549083688","not_before":"1549054588","resource":"https://storage.azure.com/","token_type":"Bearer"

Note that many of the SDKs that Microsoft provides, have support for managed identities baked in. That means that the SDK takes care of calling the Instance Metadata Service for you and presents you a token to use in subsequent calls to Azure APIs.

Now that you have the access token, you can use it in a request to the storage account, for instance to list containers:

curl -XGET -H 'Authorization: Bearer THE ACTUAL ACCESS TOKEN' -H 'x-ms-version: 2017-11-09' -H "Content-type: application/json" 'https://storageaadgeba.blob.core.windows.net/?comp=list

The result of the call is some XML with the container names. I only had a container called test:

OMG… XML

Wrap up

You have seen how to bind an Azure managed identity to a Kubernetes pod running on AKS. The aad-pod-identity project provides the necessary infrastructure and resources to bind the identity to a pod using a label in its YAML file. From there, you can work with the managed identity as you would on a virtual machine, calling the Instance Metadata Service to obtain the token (a JWT). Once you have the token, you can include it in REST calls to the Azure APIs by adding an authorization header. In this post we have used the storage APIs as an example.

Note that Microsoft has AKS Pod Identity marked as in development on the updates site. I am not aware if this is based on the aad-pod-identity project but it does mean that the feature will become an official part of AKS pretty soon!

Kubernetes on DigitalOcean

Image: from DigitalOcean’s website

Yesterday, I decided to try out DigitalOcean’s Kubernetes. As always with DigitalOcean, the solution is straightforward and easy to use.

Similarly to Azure, their managed Kubernetes product is free. You only pay for the compute of the agent nodes, persistent block storage and load balancers. The minimum price is 10$ per month for a single-node cluster with a 2GB and 1 vCPU node (s-1vcpu-2gb). Not bad at all!

At the moment, the product is in limited availability. The screenshot below shows a cluster in the UI:

Kubernetes cluster with one node pool and one node in the pool

Multiple node pools are supported, a feature that is coming soon to Azure’s AKS as well.

My cluster has one pod deployed, exposed via a service of type LoadBalancer. That results in the provisioning of a DigitalOcean load balancer:

DigitalOcean LoadBalancer

Naturally, you will want to automate this deployment. DigitalOcean has an API and CLI but I used Terraform to deploy the cluster. You need to obtain a personal access token for DigitalOcean and use that in conjunction with the DigitalOcean provider. Full details can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/gbaeke/kubernetes-do. Note that this is a basic example but it shows how easy it is to stand up a managed Kubernetes cluster on a cloud platform and not break the bank

Infrastructure as Code: exploring Pulumi

Image: from the Pulumi website

In my Twitter feed, I often come across Pulumi so I decided to try it out. Pulumi is an Infrastructure as Code solution that allows you to use familiar development languages such as JavaScript, Python and Go. The idea is that you define your infrastructure in the language that you prefer, versus some domain specific language. When ready, you merely use pulumiĀ up to deploy your resources (and pulumiĀ update, pulumiĀ destroy, etc…). The screenshot below shows the deployment of an Azure resource group, storage account, file share and a container group on Azure Container Instances. The file share is mapped as a volume to one of the containers in the container group:

Deploying infrastructure with pulumi up

Installation is extremely straightforward. I chose to write the code in JavaScript as I had all the tools already installed on my Windows box. It is also more polished than the Go option (for now). I installed Pulumi per their instructions over at https://pulumi.io/quickstart/install.html.

Next, I used their cloud console to create a new project. Eventually, you will need to run a pulumiĀ new command on your local machine. The cloud console will provide you with the command to use which is handy when you are just getting started. The cloud console provides a great overview of all your activities:

Nice and green (because I did not include the failed ones šŸ˜‰)

In Resources, you can obtain a graph of the deployed resources:

Don’t you just love pretty graphs like this?

Let’s take a look at the code. The complete code is in the following gist: https://gist.github.com/gbaeke/30ae42dd10836881e7d5410743e4897c.

Resource group, storage account and share

The above code creates the resource group, storage account and file share. It is so straightforward that there is no need to explain it, especially if you know how it works with ARM. The simplicity of just referring to properties of resources you just created is awesome!

Next, we create a container group with two containers:

Creating the container group

If you have ever created a container group with a YAML file or ARM template, the above code will be very familiar. It defines a DNS label for the group and sets the type to Linux (ACI also supports Windows). Then two containers are added. The realtime-go container uses CertMagic to obtain Let’s Encrypt certificates. The certificates should be stored in persistent storage and that is what the Azure File Share is used for. It is mounted on /.local/share/certmagic because that is where the files will be placed in a scratch container.

I did run into a small issue with the container group. The realtime-go container should expose both port 80 and 443 but the port setting is a single numeric value. In YAML or ARM, multiple ports can be specified which makes total sense. Pulumi has another cross-cloud option to deploy containers which might do the trick.

All in all, I am pleasantly surprised with Pulumi. It’s definitely worth a more in-depth investigation!

Deploying Azure resources using webhookd

In the previous blog post, I discussed adding SSL to webhookd. In this post, I will briefly show how to use this solution to deploy Azure resources.

To run webhookd, I deployed a small Standard_B1s machine (1GB RAM, 1 vCPU) with a system assigned managed identity. After deployment, information about the managed identity is available via the Identity link.

Code running on a machine with a managed identity needs to do something specific to obtain information about the identity like a token. With curl, you would issue the following command:

curl 'http://169.254.169.254/metadata/identity/oauth2/token?api-version=2018-02-01&resource=https%3A%2F%2Fmanagement.azure.com%2F' -H Metadata:true -s

The response would be JSON that contains a field called access_token. You could parse out the access_token and then use the token in a call to the Azure Resource Manager APIs. You would use the token in the autorization header. Full details about acquiring these tokens can be found here. On that page, you will find details about acquiring the token with Go, JavaScript and several other languages.

Because we are using webhookd and shell scripts, the Azure CLI is the ideal way to create Azure resources. The Azure CLI can easily authenticate with the managed identity using a simple command: azĀ loginĀ –identity. Here’s a shell script that uses it to create a virtual machine:

#!/bin/bash echo "Authenticating...`az login --identity`" 

echo "Creating the resource group...`az group create -n $rg -l westeurope`" 

echo "Creating the vm...`az vm create --no-wait --size Standard_B1s --resource-group $rg --name $vmname --image win2016datacenter --admin-username azureuser --admin-password $pw`"

The script expects three parameters: rg, vmname and pw. We can pass these parameters as HTTP query parameters. If the above script would be in the ./scripts/vm folder as create.sh, I could do the following call to webhookd: 

curl --user api -XPOST "https://<public_server_dns>/vm/create?vmname=myvm&rg=myrg&pw=Abcdefg$$$$!!!!"

The response to the above call would contain the output from the three az commands. The az login command would output the following:

 data:   {
 data:     "environmentName": "AzureCloud",
 data:     "id": "<id>",
 data:     "isDefault": true,
 data:     "name": "<subscription name>",
 data:     "state": "Enabled",
 data:     "tenantId": "<tenant_id>",
 data:     "user": {
 data:       "assignedIdentityInfo": "MSI",
 data:       "name": "systemAssignedIdentity",
 data:       "type": "servicePrincipal"
 data:     }

Notice the user object, which clearly indicates we are using a system-assigned managed identity. In my case, the managed identity has the contributor role on an Azure subscription used for testing. With that role, the shell script has the required access rights to deploy the virtual machine.

As you can see, it is very easy to use webhookd to deploy Azure resources if the Azure virtual machine that runs webhookd has a managed identity with the required access rights.