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Re: Helm versioning and CI/CD
Loritsch, Berin <bloritsch@...>
It does help. The main thing I'm looking for is to wrap my head around the thinking into how versioning was designed to work with helm. It's a big difference between saying "yeah that's a thing that can be done" and understanding what the ramifications of my choices are. That being said, there are some things I want to change in the sample charts I created. I'll try to derive some inspiration from the CI definition you provided.
On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 4:02 PM Matt Farina <matt@...> wrote:
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Berin Loritsch Systems Integration Lead 7921 Jones Branch Drive Office (703) 735-6281 Mobile (571) 215-7708
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Re: Helm versioning and CI/CD
Matt Farina
Berin, I am not entirely sure of your workflow so these are just ideas and thoughts in the area. First, appVersion is optional. You do not need to use it if you don't want to. Second, if you are using the `helm package` command there are flags to pass in the version and appVersion. Third, it is possible to alter things in CI. I was reminded of an example Antoine Legrand put together a few years ago. You can find it at https://gitlab.com/ant31/cookieapp/-/blob/master/.gitlab-ci.yml. The neat thing about the 3rd example is you can have a tag or even get a hash for a container image and then use that in the new chart version. Does any of this help? - Matt Farina
On Mon, May 4, 2020, at 1:17 PM, Loritsch, Berin wrote:
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Re: Helm versioning and CI/CD
Loritsch, Berin <bloritsch@...>
Right, in other words, build the chart for the upcoming release, but override the values in the CI/CD pipeline if that's how you work internally. Now, I attempted to do that using helm template directive to see what I get--and was disappointed. $ helm template eureka --set .Chart.appVersion=java11port Did not change appVersion for me. I tried ".Chart.appVersion", "appVersion", "Chart.appVersion" and could not get the command line to override the appVersion for me. I need some kind of mechanism so I can override this value, otherwise I am going to end up with hundreds of nearly identical helm charts where the only difference is the appVersion.
On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 3:22 PM <cncf@...> wrote: The usual way app versioning in Helm works is, the chart has a value that represents which image tag the chart should install. That tag in turn typically maps to the application version. This doesn’t have to be true, so if a variation of it works better for you when writing your charts, feel free to use it, but for charts made publicly available, it’s generally considered a best practice and almost all of them work that way. --
Berin Loritsch Systems Integration Lead 7921 Jones Branch Drive Office (703) 735-6281 Mobile (571) 215-7708
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Re: Helm versioning and CI/CD
The usual way app versioning in Helm works is, the chart has a value that represents which image tag the chart should install. That tag in turn typically maps to the application version. This doesn’t have to be true, so if a variation of it works better for you when writing your charts, feel free to use it, but for charts made publicly available, it’s generally considered a best practice and almost all of them work that way.
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Helm versioning and CI/CD
Loritsch, Berin <bloritsch@...>
I'm in the process of writing up my recommendations for how to integrate Helm into our build and deployment infrastructure. I have a few questions that I need to understand better. The most important one has to do with how versions are intended to work with Helm. There are two versions to worry about in any given helm file:
The way I understand it, Helm charts deal with _how_ something is deployed, and the container(s) itself deals with _what_ is deployed. In a shop where we do continuous integration/continuous deployment we need to come up with the policies for how we manage versions. For example, we have the policy that containers are built and tagged based on the code branch or tag we are building from. Since the chart has two version numbers embedded inside, I was wondering if there are command-line arguments to override any value. The chart itself is not going to change unless we find a defect in it. It would work with our CI/CD infrastructure if we overrode the .Chart.appVersion with the branch name when we do the full build. If that is the case, we can build our chart as if it is production, and simply override versions when deploying specific versions of an application. Berin Loritsch Systems Integration Lead 7921 Jones Branch Drive Office (703) 735-6281 Mobile (571) 215-7708
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Re: Feedback on Helm
Loritsch, Berin <bloritsch@...>
Thanks for your response. I am creating starter templates, which will help once I've got the basics nailed down. I'm only on my second component and found things I needed to modify in the templates I customized. Hopefully by the third one I'll be almost complete. The library charts are something that slipped my attention. There just isn't a lot of articles that help with the trade-offs and how to go about a decent sized microservices deployment. One of the things that attracted me to Helm in the first place was the ability to modularize the deployment packages. I am going to have to look into the library charts to see if they scratch the itch I have for the microservices deployment. I'm kind of drinking from a firehose here since learning how to write charts means also learning how Kubernetes works--and most tutorials are too basic for the level of detail I need. I am aware of the Spring integrations with Kubernetes, but with an established application I do need to take care with this lift into kubernetes infrastructure. I fully intend to ditch Eureka and potentially Config Server in favor of services and config maps once we know what we are doing and how we want to do it. It's hard enough getting something that is working to continue to work in a container environment. As you said, don't boil the ocean. The biggest questions I have right now deal with namespace management. Helm 3 removed creating namespaces, which then makes the idea of having a hierarchical namespace harder. For example, I would want a master namespace for each deployment (dev, int, qa, prod), but break down my microservices so they are part of a subsection. The namespaces do allow me to set policies independently for each group of microservices. Within "dev" I might have "dev-product1", "dev-product2", "dev-shared", "dev-frontend", "dev-data-ingest" as sub namespaces. Do I create a helm chart to render the namespace creation?
On Fri, May 1, 2020 at 4:55 PM Paul Czarkowski <pczarkowski@...> wrote:
--
Berin Loritsch Systems Integration Lead 7921 Jones Branch Drive Office (703) 735-6281 Mobile (571) 215-7708
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Re: Feedback on Helm
Paul Czarkowski <pczarkowski@...>
Berin, A few things to address your template concerns. Firstly you can create your own chart starter packs (https://helm.sh/docs/topics/charts/#chart-starter-packs) which you can base subsequent charts off, this is really useful to create a sane set of defaults for similar apps in the same languages. You can also use Library Charts (https://helm.sh/docs/topics/library_charts/) to reduce overlap/copy/paste and generally create DRYer charts. As for "Problem is when the kubernetes template is actually rendered I have a new instance of the logging-configmap for each service, etc. I need to be able to build and deploy my services in isolation as well as part of the whole for testing purposes." It's pretty common to include the dependencies in your charts so that the apps can be installed independently and start their own eureka/config-server etc, but when deployed to staging/prod you'd disable the dependencies (see condition - https://helm.sh/docs/topics/charts/#tags-and-condition-fields-in-dependencies ) and instead have the infrastructure deployed as its own thing. This also gives you the ability to maintain the infrastructure pieces of your application at a different lifecycle as your actual applications. You'd still use the rest of the settings for that subchart to configure your own application to talk to the upstream server. If you have pretty complex relationships between the apps and need to be installed in a very ordered way, you can also reach towards a higher level tool like Helmfile (a declarative spec for deploying helm charts) to perform that work (Helm tries really hard not to boil the ocean). I use Helmfile extensively for this very purpose. Also of note, Spring has some very good integrations with Kubernetes, giving you options for using kubernetes itself for service discovery and config server, which may in a homogenous environment allow you to simplify some of your app's infrastructure. I'm far from a Spring expert, but I work pretty closely with a number of the Spring team and they're working hard to make Kubernetes a first class platform for Spring, especially when it comes to the developer experience itself. If there's anything specific I can do to help, I'd be happy to get further into the weeds with you.
On Fri, May 1, 2020 at 2:16 PM Loritsch, Berin <bloritsch@...> wrote:
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Re: Feedback on Helm
Matt Farina
Berin, Thanks for such an extensive write-up. I can't address all of it now but I wanted to talk about transitive dependencies. I am curious what you are looking for in respect to that as far as handling goes. When you have a tree of dependencies you can't exactly flatten them. For example, if you have a dependency on WordPress and Drupal and they both have a dependency on MySQL you can't flatten the tree to have one MySQL. You will end up with two as they are operating as services, possible with very different configurations, for each of those. So, the transitive handling is mildly different from something like a programming language package manager. When `helm package` is run (to create the archive) the dependencies are bundled in the `charts` directory. These are the direct dependencies. Each of the direct dependencies dependencies would be bundled in its own `charts` directory and so on. This is why I ask about your use case. I wonder what's going on. I'd like to better understand it and the usage pattern. Cheers, Matt Farina
On Fri, May 1, 2020, at 3:16 PM, Loritsch, Berin wrote:
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Feedback on Helm
bloritsch@...
I'm in the process of modernizing our deployment to use containers and kubernetes to deploy a complex microservices application. The current deployment uses python scripts to place things where they need to go, and while it works, that deployment model doesn't deliver on some promises we made. We have around 30 different services we need to deploy, most of which are Spring Boot based. The bottom line is that the deployment for individual services should be reasonably the same. The availability check would use the Spring Actuator health endpoint, and the only a few things need to be distinct (such as service port, ingress path, resource limits, and things of that nature). My goal was to have a very small deployment of three microservices (discovery, config, and one of the simpler non-database services). There's some things that I like:
That said, there are a lot of rough edges:
I'm hoping I am missing something, or that there are already plans to address these rough edges. The biggest problem is the transitive package resolution. My helm charts look like this:
Problem is when the kubernetes template is actually rendered I have a new instance of the logging-configmap for each service, etc. I need to be able to build and deploy my services in isolation as well as part of the whole for testing purposes. At any rate, I would like to help make helm better. I do have time constraints, and I'm not very familiar with go-lang. I think this is a good start in a mostly correct direction. It just needs to address those rough edges. Berin Loritsch Systems Integration Lead 7921 Jones Branch Drive Office (703) 735-6281 Mobile (571) 215-7708
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Re: localizing Helm docs [feedback requested]
Matt Farina
Thanks for suggesting the Kubernetes process. I'll take a look at it. I just took Gitlocalize for a spin. I had a couple problems with it (i.e., hugo front matter handling and DCO). Won't work for us. Though, I can see how it makes many cases much easier. Translations all through a web ui that end up as PRs. Both human and machine translations supported. It's almost there but not quite. - Matt Farina On Mon, Mar 30, 2020, at 3:51 PM, Jim Angel wrote:
Attachments:
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Re: localizing Helm docs [feedback requested]
Jim Angel
Happy to chat about how k8s docs is doing it if you want! Most of the process is outlined here: https://kubernetes.io/docs/contribute/localization/ I would echo Chris' statement that it works out decently but there are challenges...
On Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 14:47 Chris Aniszczyk <caniszczyk@...> wrote:
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Re: localizing Helm docs [feedback requested]
Fedora and OpenStack use http://zanata.org It's notable the Kubernetes community just treats translations as code and that has served them decently, but they have invested in doing public "doc sprints" to help on board and train folks.
On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 2:42 PM Matt Farina <matt@...> wrote:
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Chris Aniszczyk (@cra) | +1-512-961-6719
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Re: localizing Helm docs [feedback requested]
Matt Farina
I'm kinda interested in the human based tools more than automating translations. From what I've been told, the automation quality is so-so. But, we have people interested in translating docs. But, our process for doing so is developer focused and non-devs who want to do translations will have a hard time. I'm wondering if there's a way to ease their flow. I was reminded of the simple experience Drupal had and was wondering if any other tools make it that easy.
On Mon, Mar 30, 2020, at 3:38 PM, Matt Fisher wrote:
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Re: localizing Helm docs [feedback requested]
Matt Fisher <matt.fisher@...>
Sorry, missing link:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/translator-text-api/
Matthew Fisher Caffeinated Software Engineer
Microsoft Canada
From: cncf-helm@... <cncf-helm@...> on behalf of Matt Fisher via Lists.Cncf.Io <matt.fisher=microsoft.com@...>
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2020 12:38 PM To: cncf-helm@... <cncf-helm@...>; matt@... <matt@...> Cc: cncf-helm@... <cncf-helm@...> Subject: Re: [cncf-helm] localizing Helm docs [feedback requested]
Something I was interested in looking into was the Microsoft Translator API. From its description,
> [...] that developers can easily integrate into their applications websites, tools, or any solution requiring multi-language support such as website localization, e-commerce, customer support, messaging applications, internal communication, and more.
I have not tried this program yet, but we could potentially use our Azure sponsorship money to consume this service and provide localization support for the website.
I'd be most curious to see how it'd handle syntax and code blocks.
Matthew Fisher Caffeinated Software Engineer
Microsoft Canada From: cncf-helm@... <cncf-helm@...> on behalf of Matt Farina via Lists.Cncf.Io <matt=mattfarina.com@...>
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2020 12:01 PM To: cncf-helm@... <cncf-helm@...> Cc: cncf-helm@... <cncf-helm@...> Subject: [cncf-helm] localizing Helm docs [feedback requested] The Helm website and docs are setup for localization / i18n. The flow of contributing translations is the same as contributing docs and code.
This has left me wondering... should Helm use some outside tooling to make the translation process easier? Is there something you're familiar with and would suggest? To seed the conversation, I was looking at
https://gitlocalize.com/.
Do you have any tips or pointers? We want to make the process easier. Especially for non-devs.
- Matt Farina
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Re: localizing Helm docs [feedback requested]
Matt Fisher <matt.fisher@...>
Something I was interested in looking into was the Microsoft Translator API. From its description,
> [...] that developers can easily integrate into their applications websites, tools, or any solution requiring multi-language support such as website localization, e-commerce, customer support, messaging applications, internal communication, and more.
I have not tried this program yet, but we could potentially use our Azure sponsorship money to consume this service and provide localization support for the website.
I'd be most curious to see how it'd handle syntax and code blocks.
Matthew Fisher Caffeinated Software Engineer
Microsoft Canada
From: cncf-helm@... <cncf-helm@...> on behalf of Matt Farina via Lists.Cncf.Io <matt=mattfarina.com@...>
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2020 12:01 PM To: cncf-helm@... <cncf-helm@...> Cc: cncf-helm@... <cncf-helm@...> Subject: [cncf-helm] localizing Helm docs [feedback requested] The Helm website and docs are setup for localization / i18n. The flow of contributing translations is the same as contributing docs and code.
This has left me wondering... should Helm use some outside tooling to make the translation process easier? Is there something you're familiar with and would suggest? To seed the conversation, I was looking at
https://gitlocalize.com/.
Do you have any tips or pointers? We want to make the process easier. Especially for non-devs.
- Matt Farina
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localizing Helm docs [feedback requested]
Matt Farina
The Helm website and docs are setup for localization / i18n. The flow of contributing translations is the same as contributing docs and code. This has left me wondering... should Helm use some outside tooling to make the translation process easier? Is there something you're familiar with and would suggest? To seed the conversation, I was looking at https://gitlocalize.com/. Do you have any tips or pointers? We want to make the process easier. Especially for non-devs. - Matt Farina
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Link for resolving a specified task
Sara Ben Shabbat <sarabenshabbat@...>
Hi, I'm a DevOps course student. I am now in the final project phase of the course, and I was required to deploy Prometheus operator via helm and grafana. Can you please, send me a link to a helpful guide for this task. (- From the begging till the end, which means - how to install helm with the appropriate version for the desired chart etc...) Of course, I googled it but all the guides didn't bring me to the desired solution. Thanks in advance for any help !
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Re: Helm
lmadan@...
Thanks Matthew, for your response.
I don't believe the problem is with type. I tried with $, but getting the null pointer exception. <.Values.common >: nil pointer evaluating interface {}.mypath. I believe there's some scoping issues or some hidden bug, because if i remove the sub charts then parent chart is able to resolve the value, but if i have the sub charts then it barfs about the issue. Regards, Lokesh
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Re: Helm
Matt Fisher <matt.fisher@...>
In other words, you are passing a function a string when it expected an object. If you change your function call to the type it expects, that should solve your error.
Matthew Fisher Caffeinated Software Engineer
Microsoft Canada
From: Matt Fisher <Matt.Fisher@...>
Sent: Friday, March 20, 2020 9:09 AM To: cncf-helm@... <cncf-helm@...>; lmadan@... <lmadan@...> Subject: Re: [cncf-helm] Helm
In your example, you are passing a variable of type string ("need value") to your function "mypath". Inside your "mypath" function,. it's looking for an object with a field called Values.
If you change your `include` function call to {{ include "mypath" $ }}, what happens?
Matthew Fisher Caffeinated Software Engineer
Microsoft Canada From: cncf-helm@... <cncf-helm@...> on behalf of lmadan via Lists.Cncf.Io <lmadan=alumni.usc.edu@...>
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2020 2:57 PM To: cncf-helm@... <cncf-helm@...> Cc: cncf-helm@... <cncf-helm@...> Subject: [cncf-helm] Helm
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Re: Helm
Matt Fisher <matt.fisher@...>
In your example, you are passing a variable of type string ("need value") to your function "mypath". Inside your "mypath" function,. it's looking for an object with a field called Values.
If you change your `include` function call to {{ include "mypath" $ }}, what happens?
Matthew Fisher Caffeinated Software Engineer
Microsoft Canada
From: cncf-helm@... <cncf-helm@...> on behalf of lmadan via Lists.Cncf.Io <lmadan=alumni.usc.edu@...>
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2020 2:57 PM To: cncf-helm@... <cncf-helm@...> Cc: cncf-helm@... <cncf-helm@...> Subject: [cncf-helm] Helm
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