wir.social/deployment/kubernetes/README.md

Kubernetes Helm Installation Of Ocelot.Social

Deploying ocelot.social with Helm for Kubernetes is very straight forward. All you have to do is to change certain parameters, like domain names and API keys, then you just install our provided Helm chart to your cluster.

Kubernetes Cloud Hosting

There are various ways to set up your own or a managed Kubernetes cluster. We will extend the following lists over time.
Please contact us if you are interested in options not listed below.

Managed Kubernetes:

• DigitalOcean

Configuration

You can customize the network server with your configuration by duplicate the values.template.yaml to a new values.yaml file and change it to your need. All included variables will be available as environment variables in your deployed kubernetes pods.

Besides the values.template.yaml file we provide a nginx.values.template.yaml and dns.values.template.yaml for a similar procedure. The new nginx.values.yaml is the configuration for the ingress-nginx Helm chart, while the dns.values.yaml file is for automatically updating the dns values on DigitalOcean and therefore optional.

Installation

Due to the many limitations of Helm you still have to do several manual steps. Those occur before you run the actual ocelot.social Helm chart. Obviously it is expected of you to have helm and kubectl installed. For DigitalOcean you might require doctl aswell.

Cert Manager (https)

Please refer to cert-manager.io docs for more details.

ATTENTION: Be with the Terminal in your repository in the folder of this README.

1. Create Namespace

# kubeconfig.yaml set globaly
$ kubectl create namespace cert-manager
# or kubeconfig.yaml in your repo, then adjust
$ kubectl --kubeconfig=/../kubeconfig.yaml create namespace cert-manager

2. Add Helm repository and update

$ helm repo add jetstack https://charts.jetstack.io
$ helm repo update

3. Install Cert-Manager Helm chart

# option 1
# this can't be applied via kubectl to our cluster since the CRDs can't be installed properly this way ...
# $ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/jetstack/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.3.1/cert-manager.crds.yaml

# option 2
# kubeconfig.yaml set globaly
$ helm install cert-manager jetstack/cert-manager \
  --namespace cert-manager \
  --version v1.1.0 \
  --set installCRDs=true
# or kubeconfig.yaml in your repo, then adjust
$ helm --kubeconfig=/../kubeconfig.yaml \
  install cert-manager jetstack/cert-manager \
  --namespace cert-manager \
  --version v1.1.0 \
  --set installCRDs=true

Ingress-Nginx

1. Add Helm repository and update

$ helm repo add ingress-nginx https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx
$ helm repo update

2. Install ingress-nginx

# kubeconfig.yaml set globaly
$ helm install ingress-nginx ingress-nginx/ingress-nginx -f nginx.values.yaml
# or kubeconfig.yaml in your repo, then adjust
$ helm --kubeconfig=/../kubeconfig.yaml install ingress-nginx ingress-nginx/ingress-nginx -f nginx.values.yaml

DigitalOcean Firewall

This is only necessary if you run DigitalOcean without load balancer (see here for more info) .

1. Authenticate towards DO with your local doctl

You will need a DO token for that.

# without doctl context
$ doctl auth init
# with doctl new context to be filled in
$ doctl auth init --context <new-context-name>

You will need an API token, which you can generate in the control panel at https://cloud.digitalocean.com/account/api/tokens .

2. Generate DO firewall

Get the CLUSTER_UUID value from the dashboard or from the ID column via doctl kubernetes cluster list:

# need to apply access token by `doctl auth init` before
$ doctl kubernetes cluster list

Fill in the CLUSTER_UUID and your-domain:

# without doctl context
$ doctl compute firewall create \
--inbound-rules="protocol:tcp,ports:80,address:0.0.0.0/0,address:::/0 protocol:tcp,ports:443,address:0.0.0.0/0,address:::/0" \
--tag-names=k8s:<CLUSTER_UUID> \
--name=<your-domain>-http-https
# with doctl context to be filled in
$ doctl compute firewall create \
--inbound-rules="protocol:tcp,ports:80,address:0.0.0.0/0,address:::/0 protocol:tcp,ports:443,address:0.0.0.0/0,address:::/0" \
--tag-names=k8s:<CLUSTER_UUID> \
--name=<your-domain>-http-https --context <context-name>

To get informations about your success use this command. (Fill in the ID you got at creation.):

# without doctl context
$ doctl compute firewall get <ID>
# with doctl context to be filled in
$ doctl compute firewall get <ID> --context <context-name>

DNS

TODO: I thought this is necessary if we use the DigitalOcean DNS management service? See Manage DNS With DigitalOcean

This chart is only necessary (recommended is more precise) if you run DigitalOcean without load balancer. You need to generate an access token with read + write for the dns.values.yaml at https://cloud.digitalocean.com/account/api/tokens and fill it in.

1. Add Helm repository and update

$ helm repo add bitnami https://charts.bitnami.com/bitnami
$ helm repo update

2. Install DNS

# kubeconfig.yaml set globaly
$ helm install dns bitnami/external-dns -f dns.values.yaml
# or kubeconfig.yaml in your repo, then adjust
$ helm --kubeconfig=/../kubeconfig.yaml install dns bitnami/external-dns -f dns.values.yaml

Ocelot.Social

All commands for ocelot need to be executed in the kubernetes folder. Therefore cd deployment/kubernetes/ is expected to be run before every command. Furthermore the given commands will install ocelot into the default namespace. This can be modified to by attaching --namespace not.default.

Install

Only run once for the first time of installation:

# kubeconfig.yaml set globaly
$ helm install ocelot ./
# or kubeconfig.yaml in your repo, then adjust
$ helm --kubeconfig=/../kubeconfig.yaml install ocelot ./

Upgrade & Update

Run for all upgrades and updates:

# kubeconfig.yaml set globaly
$ helm upgrade ocelot ./
# or kubeconfig.yaml in your repo, then adjust
$ helm --kubeconfig=/../kubeconfig.yaml upgrade ocelot ./

Uninstall

Be aware that if you uninstall ocelot the formerly bound volumes become unbound. Those volumes contain all data from uploads and database. You have to manually free their reference in order to bind them again when reinstalling. Once unbound from their former container references they should automatically be rebound (considering the sizes did not change)

# kubeconfig.yaml set globaly
$ helm uninstall ocelot
# or kubeconfig.yaml in your repo, then adjust
$ helm --kubeconfig=/../kubeconfig.yaml uninstall ocelot

Error Reporting

We use Sentry for error reporting in both our backend and web frontend. You can either use a hosted or a self-hosted instance. Just set the two DSN in your configmap and update the COMMIT during a deployment with your commit or the version of your release.

Self-hosted Sentry

For data privacy it is recommended to set up your own instance of sentry. If you are lucky enough to have a kubernetes cluster with the required hardware support, try this helm chart.

On our kubernetes cluster we get "mult-attach" errors for persistent volumes. Apparently DigitalOcean's kubernetes clusters do not fulfill the requirements.