aws-eksctl-with-helm

A demostration of how I provisioned kubernetes cluster with eksctl and manage the microservices by helm. This blog post further explain in details; blog post

Contents

• Architecture
• Project Objective
• Pre-requisites
  • Knowledge
  • Tools
• Demo
  • Provision cluster with eskctl
    • Configure kubectl to communicate with cluster
    • Configure auto-scaling
  • Deploy Microservices with helmfile
    • Create helm chart
    • Deploy services to cluster
• Resources

Architecture

Project Objective

By the end of each part of this project, we will know how to;

• provision scalable managed kubernetes(eks) cluster resources in AWS with the help of eksctl.
• deploy highly performant microservices applications with helmfile.

Pre-requisities

• So that we all be on the same page, it will be nice to have following in our tool belt;

Knowledge

• Basic knowledge of how AWS, kubernetes, helm, yaml, prometheus and grafana works.

Tools

• aws - cloud platform, offers reliable, scalable, and inexpensive cloud computing services.
• aws cli - a unified tool to manage your AWS services.
• VSCode - a source-code editor made by Microsoft with the Electron Framework, for Windows, Linux and macOS.
• helm - Helm helps you manage Kubernetes applications — Helm Charts help you define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes application.
• eksctl - a simple CLI tool for creating and managing clusters on EKS - Amazon's managed Kubernetes service for EC2.

Demo

From the architecture flow shown; Git --> GitHub --> eskctl --> helmfile --> kubernetes cluster --> prometheus --> Grafana

Provision cluster with eskctl

• Step 1: Programmatic access;
• Step 2: Install and configure kubectl, AWS CLI and eksctl. Link to How. Be careful to set and utilise profile name when working with multiple accounts in your machine.
• Step 3: Creating cluster with (1.) a name (2.) version 1.22 (3.) nodegroup name, type and number in a specify region. Run the command;

eksctl create cluster --name ecommerce --version 1.22 --nodegroup-name clusternode --node-type t3.micro --nodes 2 --managed

• Step 4; Check Cloudformation and eks from aws management console With this command, we have successfuly create a eks cluster with 2 nodegroup.

Configure kubectl to communicate with cluster

• Step 1; Configure your computer to communicate with your cluster. Run the command;

aws eks update-kubeconfig --region us-east-1 --name ecommerce

• Step 2; Confirm your context and test your configuration. Run these commands first to list your contexts and check your configuration

kubectl config get-contexts

kubectl get svc

Deploy Microservices with helmfile

Let’s quickly remind ourselves that;

• The microservices source code repository for this project is from this link; google-microservices-demo, containing 11 services I will be deploying with this demo. Among the services, Frontend serve as entrypoint for all the service receiving externally request from the browser. The load generator deployment is optional.
• Also, image names for each microservice, expected environment variables including which port each starts and decision on namespace depending on developer's access must be a collaborative effort between Dev and Ops team. Before moving on with the following steps, get helm installed helm
• The exact file structure;

Create helm chart

• Step 1: Create shared helm chart for the 10 microservices by running this command;

helm create common

It should auto generate a folder named after what we call our chart, containing; charts folder, template folder, Chart.yaml, values.yaml, .helmignore file. Optionally, if so desire to deploy with kubernetes declaratively, create a config.yaml, that contains defination for deployment and service for all the microservices.

• Step 2: Inside template folder create deployment and service blueprint by configuring the deployment.yaml and service.yaml
• Step 3: Set the -range built-in function for working with lists of environment variables; mostly use in the env attribute and also observe quote built-in function for working with string value.
• Step 4: In the values.yaml file where we define the variable name in flat structure, set the default values for the template files.
• Step 5; Create chart for redis. Similar processes to how we create common chart. cd into the charts folder, then run;

helm create redis

• Step 6; Create a folder named values at the root of project directory, that will contain config files for all microservice which will override the default value in the values.yaml

Deploy services to cluster

• Step 1; To preview if the config files for each service defined are correct before actual deployment, run this command for each service file;

helm template -f <path/to/file> <path/to/chart>

• Step 2; Individually check if microservices successfully deploy microservices to the cluster.

helm install -f <file-name> <releases-name> <chart-name>

• Step 3; To list the deployed microsservices with this command;

helm ls

or

kubectl get pod

• Step 4; Install helmfile tool, for macOS user;

brew install helmfile

• Step 5; Create and configure a helmfile - helmfile.yaml
• Step 6; Declare the manifest into the cluster;

helmfile sync

• Step 7; To destroy;

helm destroy

Resources

The following are useful resources that really contribute to actualise this project;

• Docs; aws doc, helm doc, eksctl doc
• YouTube Channels; TechWorldWithNana, Cloud With Raj, Be A Better Dev, DevOps Made Easy
• Repo;