Continuous Kubernetes deployments with Skaffold on Docker for Mac

Background

My previous post was about doing continuous deployment of Kubernetes application using Skaffold to a Minikube cluster. In the recent version of Docker for Desktop (Mac & Windows), there is built in support for Kubernetes. We can decide to deploy multi container applications to a single node local cluster and choose the type of Orchestrator. Currently Docker for Mac supports Docker Swarm and Kubernetes. In this post, I will demonstrate how we can use Skaffold to deploy to a Kubernetes cluster instead of Minikube.
We will perform following steps during the course of this post
  • Enable Kubernetes support for Docker for Mac
  • Set context to work with Docker for Mac
  • Use Skaffold with Docker for Mac

Enable Kubernetes support for Docker for Mac

Lets first enable the support for Kubernetes orchestrator for our installation of Docker for Mac. Navigate to the preferences section of Docker. Select the Kubernetes pane, enable Kubernetes support, select default Orchestrator ad Kubernetes. Finally apply the setting as shown with steps 1 to 4 below. In my case I had these settings already enabled. If you are enabling the settings for the first time it can take a while for the Kubernetes to start the single node cluster.
Kubernetes for Docker
Once everything is setup we should get the Docker is running and Kubernetes is running in green status.

Set context to work with Docker for Mac

We will be using the kubectl command line tool to deploy the artifacts to Kubernetes cluster. kubectl can work with multiple clusters at the same time. We need to ensure that the right context is set for the kubectl. Lets first get the list of all the clusters we have at our disposal. This is done by executing the command
kubectl config get-contexts
kubectl get context
We can see two clusters are currently configured. The minikube cluster is the current context as shown by the * sign in front of the cluster name. We need the context to be set to the docker-for-mac context. This can be done by executing the command
kubectl config use-context docker-for-desktop
kubectl use context
We are now ready to deploy the application to this cluster.

Use Skaffold with Docker for Mac

Once the right context is set, there is no change to be done on the skaffold side. We execute the same command skaffold dev which we did during the earlier post. Skaffold does its magic
skaffold dev - part1
The proper context has been selected by skaffold.
skaffold dev - part2
The build speed is just over 1 second to build the required Docker images. Same way the deploy is done in less than 2 seconds. I have not seen these kind of speeds while using docker compose in the past. With this, now skaffold is continuously monitoring for changes to the source code. Let test it by making some changes in the code.

As you can see from the above screen capture, the updates are really fast. It doesn't even take 1 second to update the deployment. I commented and uncommented the same set of lines that we had used during the previous post.

Conclusion

As can be seen from this demo, we can seamlessly move from minikube cluster to the docker for mac cluster while working with skaffold. It does not require any configuration change to the skaffold.yaml file or to the Kubernetes manifest files. Just  by setting the proper context for kubectl we can have the same productivity gains that we saw during the last post. I hope that developers working with Docker and Kubernetes find this tool useful.
Until next time, Code with Passion and Strive for Excellence.
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Continuous Kubernetes deployments with Skaffold

Background

I have been working with Docker containers and Kubernetes for quite some time now. When working with these technologies the usual workflow involves following steps (bare minimum)

  • containerize you application into a docker image
  • push the changes to the container registry like Docker Hub
  • deploy the containers to a cluster using container orchestration tool like Kubernetes

While developing an application, the developer also tests the application. It is quite time consuming to repeat the whole process every time there a change in the code and you need to rebuild the docker container, push it to registry and do the deployment. What if there was a tool which can do all of this for us and we focus on producing the code?

Introducing Skaffold

My dear friend who is a rockstar when it comes to introducing me to new cool tech, Baltazar Chua mentioned to me about Skaffold. Because Bal has this knack of picking the right tool for the right job, I have a hash tag for him #BalIsARockStar.

Skaffold is a command line tool that facilitates continuous deployment for Kubernetes applications.

In  this post we are going to do the following

  • Install Skaffold on Mac using Homebrew
  • Integrate Skaffold with existing multi container application
  • Test Skaffold using Minikube as target deployment environment

Install Skaffold on Mac using Homebrew

On the Skaffold GitHub repo, in the installation sections you find the steps to install on Linux or Mac OS. For Mac you run the following command

curl -Lo skaffold https://storage.googleapis.com/skaffold/releases/latest/skaffold-darwin-amd64 && chmod +x skaffold && sudo mv skaffold /usr/local/bin

I am a big fan of using Homebrew for installing packages on Mac. Luckily there is a Homebrew package available for Skaffold. I used this approach to install Skaffold on my Mac. Run the following command to get Skaffold installed.

brew install skaffold

Integrate Skaffold with existing multi container application

I will use the codebase from GitHub repo which I am currently working with the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Learning series. This consists of a Web frontend, a web API project and a database running inside SQL Server 2017 Linux container.

Skaffold works on the basis of very little minimal configuration. First of all we need to define the configuration in a yaml file named skaffold.yaml. This file contains 3 phases.

1. Build

In the build phase we define the build artifacts which are docker images. In this step we specify the location of the Docker files that we need to build whenever there is change in the source code.

2. Push

Once the images are built, they are pushed to the container registry referenced in the image name. I am publishing the images to Docker Hub registry. When we use the Kubernetes cluster locally like minikube or Docker for Mac, the push is skipped because the images are available locally.

3. Deploy

The deploy step ensures that the most recent versions of the artifacts are running inside the cluster. I will be using kubectl to deploy. I can reuse the Manifest files that I had created earlier for the demos.

We can see the contents of the skaffold.yaml file

I have defined the build phase on line 3. On line 4 we list all artifacts to be built as part of this phase. Lines 5 to 10 specify the image names and the location of the Dockerfile.

Next is the deploy phase on line 11. We specify kubectl as a mode of deployment and finally the list of manifests are specified on line 13 & 14. I am using the wildcard option to deploy all the manifests under k8s/Minikube directory. Currently there are 8 different manifests as shown below.

lisf of manifests

With the configuration done, lets put the Skaffold to test.

Test Skaffold using Minikube as target deployment environment

We need t run the Skaffold dev command in the directory where the skaffold.yaml file resides. Check the output of the command

In this case you can see that the build was completed in less than 2 seconds and deployment completed in less than 5 seconds. This is a great beginning. For the first time, it can take a bit long to download the respective images and  build them locally. Once the images are available in the cache it is super fast.

Update source code and experience the magic

Lets test Skaffold by making a code change to the source code. In the screenshot below you see me commenting the block of code which shows the corousel control on the homepage. The moment I comment out the code, skaffold triggers a build and deploy. Its so fast that I could not capture it in full screen mode between the VS Code IDE changes, the iTerm terminal showing the automatic build triggering and then the Safari refreshing the final output. That is the reason, I kept the 3 windows open side by side so you can see in real time how the  changes are impacted. I did these commenting and uncommenting couple of times.

It would take minutes to redeploy the changes if we were to do it without Skaffold. The best part I like about Skaffold is it is completely aware of only the parts which are changed. Notice carefully how it triggers the build for only 1 docker image and subsequently deploys only the impacted service. This is freaking cool.

Another interesting point I found out about Skaffold was its cleanup mechanism. After the testing is completed, I can stop the continuous monitoring and deployment part by stopping the dev command (CONTROL + C). Skaffold does a neat job of cleaning up the resources it created itself.

skaffold cleanup

Gotchas & Limitations

Skaffold currently works only with Linux & Mac. There is no Skaffold available for Windows OS.

Looing at the Github page for installation section, it gives an impression that there is only Linux & Mac support for Skaffold. But as rightly pointed out by Baltazar Chua, there is support for Windows OS as well. You can download the Windows executable from

https://storage.googleapis.com/skaffold/releases/latest/skaffold-windows-amd64.exe

Refer to the detailed documentation for more details.

If you are using Minikube as the target cluster, the Minikube has to be up and running. Skaffold will not start the Minikube instance automatically for you.

Conclusion

As we can see from the quick demonstrations in this post Skaffold is quite a handy utility to add to your toolkit if you are developing containerized application and deploying them to Kubernetes cluster. I can see myself using it during the development phase to improve the inner loop workflow. Based on my past experience I can say that it is a huge productivity boost and can easily save few hours a day. I was using docker compose to build multiple images together. With Skaffold taking care of building, pushing and deploying images continuously, I don't feel the need for docker compose for my workflow. In this post we saw how to use skaffold with minikube Kubernetes cluster.

In the future post I will also demonstrate how to use it with the built in Kubernetes cluster with Docker for Mac.

Until next time, Code with Passion and Strive for Excellence.

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My developer toolkit 2018 (Mac)

Background

Last year I had written a post about my developer toolkit 2017 (Mac). There are some modifications this year. For last 1 year, I have used Mac Book Pro as my primary laptop. As such many of the tools that I have been using are more open source. Its an opportunity to list the current state of things. Lets get started by looking at this years developer toolkit.

Terminal utilities

iTerm2 with OhMyZsh  – continued from past

iTerm has become quite integral part of my life on Mac. I love the colorful terminal with the Powerlevel9K theme. Although the code editors and IDE's like Visual Studio Code and IntelliJ Idea offer integrated terminals, I still prefer the dedicated iTerm 2 terminal in standalone mode with full screen.

Addition of Powerlevel9k theme

The modern day terminals are no longer black and white. We can modify them with themes to make them sleek and sexy. The post from Jessica Dean helped me to add more jazz to my terminal window.

Tabset plugin for iterm2 – continued from past

Tabset is still one of my favorite plugin for iterm2. I like to have the tabs with iterm named like one for Github related activities, others for project specific activities. Examples include using a dedicated tab for Kubernetes while working with kubectl or one for Azure CLI, one for Powershell etc. I have seen many people use tmux to split the terminal window into multiple sections. Personally I still feel very comfortable with a single tab view in iTerm.

kubectl apply

Code Editors

Visual Studio Code – continued from past

Visual Studio Code or VS Code also commonly known as code has become my primary code editor over the past year. All the public talks that I have done over the last year have been done using VS Code. I love the simplicity and the minimalistic approach taken by the designers of code. Over the time  I have added some extensions / plugins which have made working with code even more pleasing and improved the overall user experience. Here are the list of extensions I have currently with VS Code

VS Code

I like the dark Monokai theme. On the Retina display the colors really stand out and gives lot more incentive to code with passion Smile.

IntelliJ Idea community edition – continued from past

IntelliJ idea is one of the best IDE for Java development. I use it when I want to do Java or Scala development. I use following plugins with IntelliJ

IntelliJ idea

As compared to VS Code, the Material UI theme along with the file icons make IntelliJ a deadly combination. Gone are the days when we would look at black & white code editors and IDE’s.

GitHub Desktop – continued from past

It is very rare that I switch to the UI of GitHub Desktop. Many of the features of GitHub Desktop are also available via the source code management plugins and extensions available within VS Code and IntelliJ Idea. Once in a while I find the need to check the history and I find Github desktop helpful in that case. For regular operations like cloning Github repositories, doing checkins etc. I do them from iTerm terminal or from within the IDE.

SQL Operations Studio – Newly added

While working with databases, you can never underestimate the power of client connectivity tools. While on Windows SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) was my preferred client, I found recently launched SQL Operations Studio to be quite useful. I am not a full time DBA so the bare minimum features provided by this client is enough for me to run simple select queries and to manage creation of databases and other SQL server objects.

Virtualization software

Docker – continued from past

Docker has become integral part of my life over the last year. I have used it almost every time during my public talks at conferences and meetups. Apart from using it for my public demos, I have used it for experimentations related to Kafka Connect, trying out SQL Server 2017 Linux features. Now a days I look for availability of Docker images for any new stuff I wish to experiment. It allows me to keep my system clean as I can delete the image from my machine without leaving any side effect behind.

Minikube – Newly added

As my knowledge of Docker has increased, I have also started using Kubernetes for Container Orchestration. To test out Kubernetes manifest files locally I use Minikube. It helps me in making sure all the Kubernetes objects are defined correctly before deploying them in actual clusters in Azure.

General utilities

Homebrew as package manager – Continued from the past

I have been using Homebrew as package manager for installing new software on Mac. For the UI applications I have been using Homebrew Cask. I don’t remember downloading most commonly used software from their website. Using Homebrew is super easy. 

Ironically, Dotnet framework was one of the thing which i had to install due to some problem with managing the dependencies. I have installed almost all the tools listed in this blog using Homebrew and casks.

I have tried doing the same with my Windows laptop with Chocolatey. Once you get used to Homebrew or other package managers, believe me you would not want to go back to UI based installations.

Retina Display Menu (RDM) – Newly added

RDM gives us the option of setting the Mac Retina to higher resolutions. It work not only with the Retina display but also with the secondary monitor that I have.

Skitch – Newly added

I use Skitch to edit images that I post on my blog. It helps with things like adding annotations to the image.

ImageOptim – Newly added

ImageOptim helps to compress the image sizes before posting it on the blog.

Awareness – Newly added

Awareness is a nice little utility which shows you the time since you have not taken a break while working on the PC. Good thing about this utility is that it also has a windows equivalent.

Whatsapp Desktop – Newly added

Whatsapp has become the primary mode of communication. I have whatsapp desktop client for Mac which is helpful when you don’t have to switch from laptop to smartphone.

Telegram Desktop – Newly added

I recently started using Telegram. Just like Whatsapp, having a telegram desktop client is useful to communicate right from the laptop with your contacts.

Ansible – continued from past

Ansible usage improved for past year as I started looking for opportunities to remove manual steps. I like the simplicity of Ansible. It makes automating things a breeze. Recently I managed to deploy a piece of software on a multi-node cluster using Ansible.

Powershell – Newly added

While working on my Voxxed Days and Azure Bootcamp demo, I realized that Ansible could not address my needs for automating parts of deployment for Kubernetes objects. That's when I stumbled upon Powershell. Powershell now works cross platform. I developed small scripts which help me automate the provisioning of Kubernetes cluster in Azure using AKS service, deploy multi-container app to it, teardown the application resources and finally delete the resources from a resource group in Azure.

Azure CLI – Newly added

I have been exploring cloud technologies using Azure quite a lot during last year. I find Azure CLI quite handy while dealing with Azure resources. I even wrote a blog post about how we can learn more about Azure capabilities using the interactive mode in Azure CLI.

Productivity tools

Microsoft OneNote – continued from past

OneNote has been my companion for last couple of years. I create a new OneNote notebook every year. One notebook is for office related work and another one for personal.  I make full use of my IPad Pro to take notes wherever I go be it in office or at community events. I can’t imagine what would happen if I loose the notebooks I have created over the last 2-3 years. All my IP would be lost with them in most likelihood.

MacPass – continued from past

MacPass continues to be my password manager across multiple devices.

Todoist – continued from past

Todoist has helped me better organize myself. I use it to create multiple projects for personal, official and community related activities. It also helps me organize the recurring tasks like bill payments, insurance payments etc.

Dropbox – continued from past

Dropbox continues to be my preferred approach for synching documents across multiple devices.

Adobe Acrobat Reader – continued from past

Adobe Acrobat Reader continues to be my preferred reader for reading ebooks due to its capability to sync across devices via Adobe Cloud.

CheatSheet – continued from past

CheatSheet still continues to be my best friend when I want to learn about keyboard shortcuts in existing and new programs.

Spectacle – continued from past

Spectacle is another utility which I always use on daily basis. I use it to move windows across multiple screens, resize the screens.

TweetDeck – newly added

TweetDeck gives the ability to add multiple columns for Tweets, Mentions, Retweets, Notifications etc.

Battery related utilities

I still use all the battery related utilities listed in last years blog. Among all Battery Monitor is the best I found useful. It gives option to set threshold when the notification should appear. I know immediately when the battery is 100% charged as well as when there is only 5% remaining. This helps me to not overcharge the battery.

Things which got deleted / deprecated

Atom and Sublime text code editors

I did not find any use case to use these two editors during last one year. I should remove them from the Mac Dev Setup ansible playbook which I use to setup the laptop.

VirtualBox & Vagrant

Since Docker now has support for Docker for Mac, I did not find use case for VirtualBox and Vagrant. VirtualBox is still used by Minikube internally. I did not have the need to work with VirtualBox or vagrant directly. I think Vagrant would go away from my Mac soon.

Blogo

Blogo did not have the features I was looking for. Instead of trying to find a blog editor native to Mac, i decided to stick with my preferred Open Live Writer on windows.

f.lux

Initially I was impressed by flux. But then I ended up switching it off more often than not. In the end I decided to remove it altogether.

What I am still looking for

Mac alternative for MobaXterm

On windows, I am used to MobaXterm which allows to store collection of remote systems. I can just double click on one of the node and login to the remote server. I have not found a similar utility for Mac. I also like the multi tabbed interface of Moba.

Conclusion

During the past year, as I shifted from Windows to Mac as my primary development laptop I embraced many of the open source tools. I mainly worked with Docker and Kubernetes during this time. For the C# code, I used VS Code and for Java and Scala I used IntelliJ as my preferred IDE. I have got used to the spotlight feature of Mac to quickly start application and look for documents.

Now a days, my workflow involves using the Spotlight with COMMAND + SPACE keyboard combination. Use Spectacle to move the application to the screen I want to work with mostly using the key combinations COMMAND + OPTION + CONTROL + LEFT ARROW or RIGHT ARROW to move to the screen. And finally use full screen mode using Spectacle COMMAND + OPTION + F.

I am sure there are many other tools and utilities which can make developers life easier while working with Mac. I would love to hear about them. I hope some of these tools and utilities are found useful to the readers.

Until next time, Code With Passion and Strive for Excellence.

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Understand Kubernetes Object - Init Containers

Background

This is the fifth part of the series on building highly scalable multi-container apps using AKS. So far in this series we have covered following topics.

In this post we will get familiar with the concept of init containers. Lets first understand the need for init-containers. In our application we have the TechTalksWeb API which depends on the persistent data stored in MS SQL Server database. It takes few seconds for the SQL Server container to start and to initialize the static data. In the meantime the web API container will start and try to connect to the database container. It will fail if the database container is not yet initialized. In such situation, Kubernetes provides an object named init-container. It ensures that the initialization tasks are completed before the dependent container can be started.

In our case we will make use of the init-container to initialize the database. The web API container will be started only after the database service is successfully started.

We will be performing following actions during this post

  • Use Docker-compose to build and publish images to DockerHub
  • Setup init container using Kubernetes manifest file to initialize the TechTalksDB inside the SQlserver 2017 container image
  • Deploy services in one go using kubectl

Pre-requisites

Build Docker images for following components:

  • TechTalksWeb
  • TechTalksAPI
  • TechtalksDB

I find it easier to use Docker-compose to stich the services together. We can then build, tag and push these images using docker-compose instead of building them individually. Once the images are pushed to Dockerhub container registry, we can deploy web front, web api and the database containers using Kubernetes manifest.


Here is an example of the compose file which I use for composing the multiple services. I recently presented a hands on session specifically around stitching multi-container apps using Docker-compose for  Azure User Group. The video of the session is available  at Engineers.sg site.

We will be using a sql script to initilalize our database with static data. The initializedb.sql script is straightforward. It initializes the database if it does not exists. It creates tables to store static data like categories, level etc.

Set up init container

In the code snippet above, we can see that the spec has a section named init-containers on line number 21. Here we specify the image to be used which is named nileshgule/sqlclient. At the time of building this image, we are copying the initializedb.sql script. We specify the command to be executed using sqlcmd command line utility.

/opt/mssql-tools/bin/sqlcmd -S db-deployment -U sa -P January2018 -d master -i initialize-database.sql

This is then followed by the regular containers section on line 28. The containers will be instantiated only after the init container has completed its work. This ensures that the TechTalksDB database is fully initialized before the API tries to connect to the SQL server.

Deploy services in one shot

Earlier we saw how we can deploy a service using kubectl command and passing an individual manifest file to it. The kubectl command is quite flexible and provides us a convenient way using a single command to recursively deploy multiple objects.  Under the Minikube folder, we have multiple sub-folders which contain manifest files for each type of service. Instead of running kubectl create or apply command with individual filenames, I can run following command to recursively apply all the manifest files with one single command

kubectl apply –recursive –filename .

At the time when I was building the demo for Azure Bootcamp presentation, I had multiple services running using Minikube. I am using a subset of those services here. To deploy only 3 services along with the namespace, I executed the commands shown below in the specific order.

kubectl apply

The same set of commands  are also available as Powershell script and can be executed in one go by running the script. The apply command will apply only the changes to the desired state configuration. If the current state matches the expected state no changes would be done. The end result of this command is as shown below

Kubernetes dashboard

The techtalksapi we can see contains two images. If we dive deep into the Pods section & click on the techtalks API related pod, we can see the following details

tech talks API detailed events

Notice that the techtalkapi:v1 pod is only created after the sqlclient container is fully started.

We can also see the service discovery working to perfection. The WebAPI refers to the sql database using its service name db-deployment on line 35 in the manifest file. Normally we would have provided a fully qualified connection string to connect to sql database server. In the future post we will look into the aspects related to resourcing needs in detail.

Conclusion

As we saw in this post, the concept of init-containers is quite powerful in ensuring that dependent services are up and running. Ideally you would implement a resilient mechanism like exponential backoff to handle failures. We will cover that part in future post. The complete source code is available on Github.

Until next time, Code with Passion and Strive for Excellence.

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