Kind Dev Cluster on Codespaces

Setup a Kubernetes Developer Cluster using kind or k3d running in GitHub Codespaces

GitHub Codespaces is currently in preview

Fork this repo

• Fork this repo and use your fork to run GitHub Codespaces

Open with Codespaces

• Click the Code button on the forked repo
• Click Open with Codespaces
• Click New Codespace

Open Workspace

• When prompted, choose Open Workspace

Build and Deploy Cluster

By default the solution will create a kind cluster. If you want to use k3d export the K8S environment variable

# (optional) set makefile to use k3d
export K8S=k3d

• From the Codespaces terminal
  • ensure you are in the ~/workspaces/akdc-kind directory
  • make all

Validate Deployment

Output from make all should resemble this

default      fluentb                                   1/1   Running   0   31s
default      jumpbox                                   1/1   Running   0   25s
default      loderunner                                1/1   Running   0   31s
default      ngsa-memory                               1/1   Running   0   33s
monitoring   grafana-64f7dbcf96-cfmtd                  1/1   Running   0   32s
monitoring   prometheus-deployment-67cbf97f84-tjxm7    1/1   Running   0   32s

# curl all of the endpoints
{ "apiVersion": "1.0", "appVersion": "0.1.1-0210-0338", "language": "C#" }

0.1.1-0210-0537

<a href="/graph">Found</a>.

<a href="/login">Found</a>.

Validate deployment with k9s

• From the Codespace terminal window, start k9s
  • Type k9s and press enter
  • Press 0 to select all namespaces
  • Wait for all pods to be in the Running state (look for the STATUS column)
  • Use the arrow key to select nsga-memory then press the l key to view logs from the pod
  • To go back, press the esc key
  • To view other deployed resources - press shift + : followed by the deployment type (e.g. secret, services, deployment, etc).
  • To exit - :q <enter>

Service endpoints

• All endpoints are usable in your browser via clicking on the Ports (4) tab
  • Select the open in browser icon on the far right
• Some popup blockers block the new browser tab
• If you get a gateway error, just hit refresh - it will clear once the port-forward is ready

# check endpoints
make check

Other interesting endpoints

Open curl.http

curl.http is used in conjuction with the Visual Studio Code REST Client extension.

When you open curl.http, you should see a clickable Send Request text above each of the URLs

Clicking on Send Request should open a new panel in Visual Studio Code with the response from that request like so:

Jump Box

A jump box pod is created so that you can execute commands in the cluster

• use the kje alias
  • kubectl exec -it jumpbox --
• examples
  • run http against the ClusterIP
    • kje http ngsa-memory:8080/version
  • run an interactive shell
    • kje bash -l
      • note: -l causes a login and processes .profile
      • note: sh -l will work, but the results will not be displayed in the terminal

Launch Grafana Dashboard

• Grafana login info

  • admin
  • Ngsa512

• Once make all completes successfully

  • Click on the ports tab of the terminal window
  • Click on the open in browser icon on the Grafana port (32000)
  • This will open Grafana in a new browser tab

View Grafana Dashboard

• Click on Home at the top of the page
• From the dashboards page, click on NGSA

Run a load test

# from Codespaces terminal
make load-test

• Switch to the Grafana brower tab
• The test will generate 400 / 404 results
• The requests metric will go from green to yellow to red as load increases
  • It may skip yellow
• As the test completes
  • The metric will go back to green (1.0)
  • The request graph will return to normal

View Prometheus Dashboard

• Click on the ports tab of the terminal window

• Click on the open in browser icon on the Prometheus port (30000)

• This will open Prometheus in a new browser tab

• From the Prometheus tab

  • Begin typing NgsaAppDuration_bucket in the Expression search
  • Click Execute
  • This will display the histogram that Grafana uses for the charts

View Fluent Bit Logs

• Start k9s from the Codespace terminal
• Select fluentb and press enter
• Press enter again to see the logs
• Press s to Toggle AutoScroll
• Press w to Toggle Wrap
• Review logs that will be sent to Log Analytics when configured

Build and deploy a local version of LodeRunner

• Switch back to your Codespaces tab

# from Codespaces terminal

# make and deploy a local version of LodeRunner to k8s
make loderunner

Build and deploy a local version of ngsa-memory

• Switch back to your Codespaces tab

# from Codespaces terminal

# make and deploy a local version of ngsa-memory to k8s
make app

Next Steps

Makefile is a good place to start exploring

FAQ

Question: Why don't we use helm to deploy Kubernetes manifests?

Answer: The purpose of this repository is to get developers up and running, with all dependencies install and deployed, so they can focus on writing code. The target audience for this repository is the app developers who do not necessary care about how their app is deployed.

Leaving the manifests as is rather than converting them to helm has the added benefit of readability so if a developer did want to see how their app is deployed or if they need to make modifications to the deployment, it is a lot easier to do so.

In saying that, we do have helm installed inside the .devcontainer to make it easy to deploy additional dependencies to the cluster in future.