Kubernetes needs no introduction in this cloud-native world. It was born when I was a middle-aged man. Years later, I am still as young as earlier (take with a pinch of salt) while Kubernetes grew out to be a fine tool that outperformed other platforms in enabling operational efficiency and application resilience. In the past, I wrote on Kubernetes and supported platforms. But then, in the pursuit of appyness, there is no end to innovation. several articles and guides In this article today, I take up another interesting use-case of Devtron as an open-source platform that refactors the Kubernetes ecosystem into an easy-to-use AppOps model. First, a few basics. What Are We Trying to Achieve? Exploring the Devtron platform to validate its capabilities to build, deploy and manage apps on a K8s cluster. What is Devtron? Devtron is an open-source, GUI based platform to deploy and manage Kubernetes applications. The platform allows you to manage an entire application ecosystem through a single control pane that spans across multiple cloud service providers with varying environments. While doing so, efficient collaboration and security sits at its core to naturally enable a DevOps model. Let's get a hands-on. Stage 1: Creating an Amazon EKS Cluster We will start with configuring an AWS EKS cluster (you may also use a GKE or AKS cluster as per your choice). In case you already have a cluster setup, you may skip over to Stage 2. Part One: Installing the AWS CLI To work with AWS on the command line, you need to install the , that enables the creation and management of AWS services from a Linux, macOS, or Windows console. If you’re logged into the AWS console, you can spin up the which comes preinstalled with the AWS CLI. AWS CLI AWS CloudShell, To install AWS CLI on Linux, log into your Linux operating system and access the console. Fetch the latest AWS CLI version for platform. Linux-x86(64-bit) $ curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip" The URL above is different for the ARM platform-based Linux. More details can be found . Quick Tip: here 2. Unzip the fetched zip file. $ unzip awscliv2.zip 3. Run the with admin privileges. install script $ sudo ./aws/install 4. Finally, validate the version of the AWS CLI installed. $ aws --version Output of the command above shows the current version of the AWS CLI installed. Once confirmed, we are ready to proceed with the next steps. Part Two: Installing the eksctl command-line tool. To create the Amazon EKS Cluster from the command line, install the command-line tool on the Linux operating system. Note that this is also possible on macOS and Windows. The following commands will cover how to install the tool on 64-bit Linux. eksctl Fetch the latest version of . eksctl $ curl --silent --location "https://github.com/weaveworks/eksctl/releases/latest/download/eksctl_$(uname -s)_amd64.tar.gz" | tar xz -C /tmp 2. Move the extracted files to . /usr/local/bin $ sudo mv /tmp/eksctl /usr/local/bin 3. Then confirm your In my case, it was and might be different for you. eksctl version. 0.40.0 $ eksctl version 0.40 .0 Part Three: Deploy an EKS Cluster with Active Nodes. The next step is to deploy an Amazon EKS cluster. To do so, use the command, that sets up all the required resources. create cluster $ eksctl create cluster \ - -name devtron-darwin-cluster \ - -region us-east-2 \ - -nodegroup-name devtron-darwin-nodegroup \ - -node-type t2.micro \ - -nodes 4 \ - -nodes-min 1 \ - -nodes-max 5 \ - -managed The command above creates an with  - EKS Cluster a given , name region, nodegroup-name, node-type, nodes, and of the node group, minimum nodes maximum nodes and then deploys the cluster on a type. managed node group You may also change the values of the above to those as desired for your environment. 2. When the command execution completes, you should have your EKS cluster ready with a similar message as shown below. Don’t worry about the message , that is what we will install in the next part. “kubectl not found” You can then confirm your created EKS cluster and node configuration on the AWS portal as shown below. Part Four: Installing kubectl To work with our new EKS cluster, we need to install an open-source command-line tool used to interact with Kubernetes clusters. kubectl, Fetch the tool for Kubernetes version 1.18. Note that there are different links available for lower or higher versions, however, to use Devtron, version 1.18 or above is recommended. kubectl $ curl -o kubectl https://amazon-eks.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1.18.9/2020-11-02/bin/linux/a md64/kubectl 2. Change the permissions to allow execution on the binary fetched. kubectl $ chmod +x ./kubectl 3. Copy the binary in the current path to your home directory. $ mkdir -p $HOME/bin && cp ./kubectl $HOME/bin/kubectl && export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin 4. Check the version of installed to confirm the installation has been successful and as intended. kubectl $ kubectl version --short --client Client Version: v1.18.9-eks-d1db3c 5. Next, you should be able to run the command below to see your active Kubernetes cluster. $ kubectl get service NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE kubernetes ClusterIP 10.100 .0 .1 <none> 443 /TCP 33 d Stage 2: Installing Devtron Installing Devtron is supported through three ways, installation using , Helm 2, or Helm 3. kubectl For the purpose of this article, we shall cover installing Devtron using with that use to store build cache and logs. Helm 3 default configurations Minio Start by changing the Kubernetes context to the EKS cluster that you want to use, change the and values to those specific to your environment. region cluster name $ aws eks --region us-east-2 update-kubeconfig --name darwin-devtron-cluster02 2. Create a to use for Devtron using as the name. namespace devtroncd $ kubectl create namespace devtroncd 3. Fetch Helm 3 from the official helm repo using the curl command. $ curl -fsSL -o get_helm.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/master/scripts/get-helm-3 4. Change the permissions on the to allow . helm script execution $ chmod 700 get_helm.sh 5. Execute the helm script. $ ./get_helm.sh For Helm to install, you need the OpenSSL library on your Linux operating system. For this article, we are using a RedHat-based Linux operating system so we will use the package manager to install OpenSSL. Quick Tip: yum $ sudo yum -y install openssl 6. To confirm the Helm installation, type the command below to receive the output as shown. $ helm version WARNING: Kubernetes configuration file is group-readable. This is insecure. Location: /home/cloudshell-user/.kube/config WARNING: Kubernetes configuration file is world-readable. This is insecure. Location: /home/cloudshell-user/.kube/config version.BuildInfo{Version:"v3.5.3", GitCommit:"041ce5a2c17a58be0fcd5f5e16fb3e7e95fea622", GitTreeState:"dirty", GoVersion: "go1.15.8" } 7. After installing Helm, add the Devtron Helm chart repo that uses the Helm installation method. ( : https://docs.devtron.ai/) Source $ helm repo add devtron https://helm.devtron.ai 8. Next, use the command below to navigate to the Devtron installation directory, set the for Devtron, the for PostgreSQL, and start installing Devtron. ( : https://docs.devtron.ai/) namespace password Source $ helm install devtron devtron/devtron-operator --namespace devtroncd --set secrets.POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD=new-password-here 9. To monitor the Devtron installation’s progress, access the pods within the namespace and take note of the that begins with devtroncd pod inception-849d647c4d. $ kubectl get pod -n devtroncd 10. Type the command below to monitor the that show the installation progress. logs $ kubectl logs -f inception-849d647c4d-ldncs -n devtroncd The installation takes about 15 to 30 minutes to complete. When that is done, use the following command to verify that the installation has been completed successfully. The command should echo a result onto the console. Applied $ kubectl -n devtroncd get installers installer-devtron -o jsonpath='{.status.sync.status}' Applied[cloudshell-user@ip-10-0-XX-XX ~]$ 11. You can also verify the running pods in the namespace by typing the command shown below. devtroncd $ kubectl get pods -n devtroncd The command output above shows us the running pods within the namespace. devtroncd 12. Before we can access the dashboard, obtain the that was created during the Devtron installation process. Use the command below to get the password. admin password $ kubectl -n devtroncd get secret devtron-secret -o jsonpath='{.data.ACD_PASSWORD}' | base64 -d

argocd-server-59XXXXX-XXXX[cloudshell-user@ip-10-0-XX-XX ~]$ 13. After that, type a command that gets all the within the namespace and choose the , which has a that you can paste into your browser. services devtroncd load balancer service public address $ kubectl get svc -n devtroncd devtron-grafana ClusterIP 10.100 .159 .169 devtron-kubernetes-external-secrets ClusterIP 10.100 .171 .60 devtron-minio ClusterIP 10.100 .230 .236 devtron-minio-svc ClusterIP None devtron-nats ClusterIP 10.100 .195 .145 devtron-nats-mgmt ClusterIP None devtron-service LoadBalancer 10.100 .204 .202 a4777dd57858a4dc59afb0a4517b1748-XXXXXXXXXX.us-east-2.elb.amazonaws.com PS: Dashboard URL above is edited for security purposes. 14. Paste the URL of the in a browser, which then loads up the Devtron dashboard. The next step is to insert the username “ ” and the password that was provided. load balancer admin To access the password that was automatically generated for the default admin user account, type the below command into your console. Quick Tip: $ kubectl -n devtroncd get secret devtron-secret -o jsonpath='{.data.ACD_PASSWORD}' | base64 -d That’s it, you have successfully installed Devtron on your Amazon EKS cluster and accessed the dashboard. You are now ready to start creating applications using Devtron. Quick Tip: Once you are through with the Devtron dashboard setup, you can also enable Single Sign-On for the Devtron dashboard using third-party Identity providers. To do so, you need to access the Devtron page and then apply settings under the tab. Global Configurations SSO Login Services Stage 3: Deploying an Application using Devtron The following steps will cover how to deploy an application using Devtron. To get started, we need to set up a few prerequisites for successful deployment. Part One: Setting the Host URL In the Devtron dashboard, click on the button at the bottom left and select the option Global Configurations Host URL. 2. Update the URL with that of the Devtron Service Load Balancer. You can use a custom domain within AWS Route 53 that points to the Devtron service load balancer to avoid using the long URL. Quick Tip: Part Two: Adding a GitOps account For successful Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) using Devtron, the tool needs to access a that holds different parameters and configurations (Helm charts) for your Devtron applications. A repository will be automatically created once CI is initiated, as we shall see in the following steps. GitOps account To add a GitOps account, click on the GitOps tab on the left of your global configurations screen and add the Github organization and access credentials. Add the the name, and then click . Git Host, Github organization Git access credentials, Save Part Three: Adding a Git Account After adding a GitOps account, the next step is adding a Git account. Click on Name to your Git provider, set the the Git , , and then click . add git account, URL, Authentication type, Username Password Save Part Three: Adding a Docker Registry The next step is adding a docker registry that we shall use to build, push, and pull our images to the designated Docker Repo using the Devtron CI/CD pipeline. Click set the , the (in our case its ECR), add the , the the , and then click . Add docker registry, Registry name Registry type Registry URL AWS region, Amazon IAM role access Id, Secret access key Save Part Four: Adding a New App On the Devtron dashboard, click on the tab; this will bring up a display with a button at the top right of the screen, click on the button. Applications Add New App 2. The next step is to give the Application a , select the for the Application, and set the Applications . In this demo, we are using a Blank App template. Name Project Template You can create multiple projects and groups for your applications across different projects. This enables ease of management of deployments. To create new projects, access the projects tab under the global configuration menu. Quick Tip: 3. After clicking a new screen will add the and In this demo, we are using the Github public provider, add the Git repo URL for our application, set the checkout path to its defaults, and click . Create App, Git Provider, Git Repo URL, Checkout Path. Save 4. Next, the Git Materials configuration will appear, where you are ready to move on to the step. Click Next at the bottom right of the screen, which takes you to the page. next Docker Build Configuration 5. Set the Dockerfile’s for the application, select the set the click and then click . Relative Path Container Registry, Docker Repository, Save Configuration, Next 6. The next page allows us to set the parameters. For this demo, we shall leave all the settings with their defaults and click . Deployment Template Save 7. Once you click , you should see the Devtron Application’s Helm chart repo automatically created in the Github organization specified. Then, click to proceed to the workflow editor page. Save Next Stage 4: Triggering Continuous Integration & Delivery (CI/CD) In this section, we will build and deploy our containerized application to a Kubernetes cluster using Devtron. Part One: Triggering Continuous Integration To enable Continuous Integration, we need to add a new workflow to our application. Click add a give the workflow a and click . New Workflow , Name Save 2. Once that is done, click to start setting up Continuous Integration. Add CI Pipeline Then, select the option to that contains the Dockerfile. Continuous Integration build a docker image from the Git repo 3. Next, assign the CI pipeline a , set the Git to build the image, click and leave the other settings with their defaults for demo purposes. name branch name create pipeline You may select the pipeline execution method in a situation where you want to maintain complete control over the builds and deployments of your workload. Quick Tip: Manual 4. After creating the pipeline, click the button and then select the option. + Deploy to Environment 5. Next, assign the to the deployment pipeline, click and leave other settings with their defaults unless required specifically. Name Create pipeline, You can select , , or deployment strategies for your applications within the deployment pipeline and can change any time with just a single click. Quick Tip: Rolling Canary Blue-green After setting the configurations, the new should appear as shown below. Workflow 6. Next,  click on the tab, and select the step button to initiate the Continuous Integration pipeline. Trigger build material 7. Once you a popup shows a list of previous commits to build the application from. Select Material, 8. Select the commit and click . You can also monitor progress by selecting the tab and select the section. Start Build Build History Logs The screenshot displays the build logs, the build and push process of the container image, and the container registry. Part Two: Triggering Continuous Deployment The final step is to deploy the application to the EKS cluster using the deployment pipeline step. Select the tab to view your available workflows. Click on the deploy step to trigger the deployment using the deployment strategy that we defined, and the pipeline will display as . Trigger Select Image Progressing 2. To confirm that the deployment is done, click on the tab, and select your environment. Deployment Metrics And we are done! The Devtron platform is now all setup with your workload. Below I have also captured a few troubleshooting steps in case you face any of the issues. Stage 5: Troubleshooting Typical Setup and Deployment Issues Re-installation of Devtron freezes or returns errors. Issue 1: If an earlier Installation of Devtron failed on the cluster, you might receive errors in case you try to re-install Devtron. Make sure to look at the errors that are being thrown from the pod. You can quickly check the logs using the command below. inception $ kubectl logs -f inception-d95bc9478-7blw6 -n devtroncd 2. Change the name of the pod to that of your environment. The command below also produces similar output on any cluster. inception $ pod=$(kubectl -n devtroncd get po -l app=inception -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}')&& kubectl -n devtroncd logs -f $pod 3. Then run the following commands to clean up the previous installations. $ cd devtron-installation-script/ $ kubectl delete -n devtroncd -f yamls/ $ kubectl delete -n devtroncd -f charts/devtron/templates/devtron-installer.yaml $ kubectl delete -n devtroncd -f charts/devtron/templates/install.yaml $ kubectl delete -n devtroncd -f charts/devtron/crds $ kubectl delete ns devtroncd 4. Additionally, you can also run the command below to make sure that all components of the past installation are removed. $ cd devtron-installation-script/ $ kubectl delete -n devtroncd -f yamls/ $ kubectl -n devtroncd patch installer installer-devtron --type json -p '[{"op": "remove", "path": "/status"}]' Initial Devtron Application build error using CI pipeline. Issue 2: You may get a build error as shown in the screenshot below just after logging in to the Devtron dashboard while creating your first application, and then triggering Continuous Integration. This may also occur when the previous installation was set to and cache logs initially set to AWS S3 storage and then later changed to the Store Build default storage configuration. To resolve the issue, run the commands below to upgrade your Devtron installation. $ helm repo update $ helm upgrade devtron devtron/devtron-operator -n devtroncd 2. Then, monitor the status of the upgrade and confirm completion by running the command below. $ kubectl -n devtroncd get installers installer-devtron -o jsonpath='{.status.sync.status}' Devtron fails to connect to Github for GitOps Issue 3: Often, this might not be a Devtron issue, but the Github API’s connection might be broken. The solution to this is to make sure that you can call Github to get your organization’s repository. The screenshot below shows a failed call. The screenshot below shows a successful API call to the organization’s (Brollyca) repo. Additionally, you can monitor the logs for all your Git operations by checking the activity within the pod that runs all the Git operations. git-sensor $ kubectl logs -f git-sensor-0 -n devtroncd Verdict? Straightforward and simple! The concept of an AppOps model has been in theory since a long time. Several other platforms including GitLab, Azure DevOps, Harness, etc. tried this in the past but had their own set of limitations to be considered for a wider adoption. It is interesting to note that Devtron has held the bull by its horn by making itself platform agnostic, where collaboration is the key. In a set of forthcoming articles, I wish to dig deeper on Devtron’s claimed features which aren’t covered in this article, such as - scanning Docker images for vulnerabilities, writing config maps, storing application secrets, and defining an application deployment strategy. I am sure the platform has much in store to explore, make use of and review. Till then, happy coding with masks on. 😷

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