Simple CI/CD deployment from Github to Kubernetes on Digital Ocean

Kyle Redelinghuys -

I spent a bit of time rebuilding a small Go application recently and I wanted to implement an easy test, build, deploy pipeline to a Kubernetes instance I have on Digital Ocean. This took longer than I was expecting, so I will detail what I did in this post both for whoever needs it as well as my future self.

Note: this is a very simple approach, it just tests, builds and deploys and effectively hopes for the best. There is no blue/green deployment or anything else that fancy.

Throughout this post it is assumed that the application name is "appname" and the namespace is also "appname".

End State

I wanted the following to happen when I pushed code to the master branch:

  • Tests run against the application
  • The application was built
  • The Docker image was built
  • Docker image pushed to private docker repository and tagged with a version number set in code
  • Kubernetes manifests updated using the latest version
  • New containers created using the new version
  • Monitored kubernetes for success/failure

This involves a few pieces behind the scenes. At the application level, we need two main files: Dockerfile and Makefile.

Dockerfile

This is the default Dockerfile I use for Go applications. It's super light and secure, and the images are tiny.

FROM golang:alpine as builder
ENV GO111MODULE on

RUN mkdir -p /build

WORKDIR /build
COPY go.mod go.sum ./
RUN apk add git && go mod download
ADD . .
RUN mkdir -p /app
# If you have static assets like templates
COPY tpl /app/tpl

RUN CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux go build -a -installsuffix cgo -ldflags '-extldflags "-static"' -o /app/appname .

# FROM alpine
FROM gcr.io/distroless/base
COPY --from=builder /app /app

WORKDIR /app

EXPOSE 80 8080

CMD ["./appname"]

Makefile

The Makefile contains quite a few different pieces but I'll drop in only the relevant ones.

The version is kept in the codebase in the following line:

var version = "0.1"

Which allows the grep and sed commands to work correctly. The Makefile looks like this:

version=$(shell grep "version" main.go | sed 's/.*"\(.*\)".*/\1/')

version:
	echo ${version}
 
publish:
	docker build --rm -t username/appname:${version} . && docker push username/appname:${version}
    
update:
	VERSION=${version} envsubst < k8s/deployment.yml | kubectl apply -n appname -f -
	kubectl apply -f k8s/service.yml -f k8s/ingress.yml -n appname

Now we can use make version to see the version, make publish to build and publish a docker image with the latest version and make update to deploy the latest version to the Kubernetes cluster.

Requirements

A lot is required in the background to make this work. There are secrets to be stored in Github, and then secrets that I keep in Kubernetes. The Github secrets are used for Docker tasks, and the Kubernetes secrets are used for environment variables.

The Github secrets are as follows and pretty self-explanatory:

The Digital Ocean access token can be found in the API section in the dashboard. The Docker username and password is what you use to log in to Dockerhub (where I keep my images).

The following is used to create the Kubernetes secrets:

kubectl create secret docker-registry docker-registry -n appname \
 --docker-username=DOCKER_USERNAME \
 --docker-password=DOCKER_PASSWORD \
 --docker-email=DOCKER_EMAIL

 kubectl create secret generic newsbias-db-details -n appname \
 --from-literal="username=digital-ocean-db-user" \
 --from-literal="password=digital-ocean-db-password" \
 --from-literal="host=digital-ocean-db-host" \
 --from-literal="port=digital-ocean-db-port"

 kubectl create secret generic prod-route53-credentials-secret -n cert-manager \
 --from-literal="secret-access-key=SECRET_KEY"

The first secret is for Kubernetes to be able to pull down the images from the private Docker registry.

The second secret is environment variable related - these are passed in to the application as environment variables. This is really cool, because you have can have multiple environments (dev, staging, prod) and just use different namespaces to store the relevant variables. No changes to pipelines.

The third secret is used by the Let's Encrypt cert manager to automatically configure the DNS, where my DNS is on AWS. I've had too much hassle using web-based validation to just skip it. It's mainly due to the way I use the load balancers at Digital Ocean, as they pass the traffic through and this causes trouble. The DNS validation is much more preferred now.

Manifests

Provisioning

There are a few manifests that I use to spin up a new Kubernetes cluster which I thought would be handy for anyone doing the same.

They are listed in order of application. The pre-requisite for this step is to have a Kubernetes cluster created.

namespace.yml

apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: appname

ingress.yml

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: newsbias-ingress
  namespace: appname
  annotations:
    cert-manager.io/cluster-issuer: letsencrypt-prod
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: nginx
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/server-snippet: |-
      location /metrics { return 404; }
      location /debug { return 404; }
spec:
  tls:
    - hosts:
        - appname.com
      secretName: appname-tls
  rules:
    - host: appname.com
      http:
        paths:
          - backend:
              serviceName: appname
              servicePort: 80

ingress-controller.yml

controller:
  image:
    repository: k8s.gcr.io/ingress-nginx/controller
    tag: "v0.43.0"
  containerPort:
    http: 80
    https: 443

  # Will add custom configuration options to Nginx https://kubernetes.github.io/ingress-nginx/user-guide/nginx-configuration/configmap/
  config:
    compute-full-forwarded-for: "true"
    use-forwarded-headers: "true"
    use-proxy-protocol: "true"

  ## Election ID to use for status update
  electionID: ingress-controller-leader
  ingressClass: nginx
  kind: DaemonSet

  # Define requests resources to avoid probe issues due to CPU utilization in busy nodes
  # ref: https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/issues/4735#issuecomment-551204903
  # Ideally, there should be no limits.
  # https://engineering.indeedblog.com/blog/2019/12/cpu-throttling-regression-fix/
  resources:
    limits:
      cpu: 100m
      memory: 90Mi
    requests:
      cpu: 100m
      memory: 90Mi

  service:
    enabled: true

    annotations:
      # https://developers.digitalocean.com/documentation/v2/#load-balancers
      # https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/kubernetes/how-to/configure-load-balancers/
      service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-name: "KubernetesLoadBalancer"
      service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-hostname: lb.thenewsbias.com
      service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-enable-proxy-protocol: "true"
      service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-algorithm: "round_robin"
      service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-healthcheck-port: "80"
      service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-healthcheck-protocol: "http"
      service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-healthcheck-path: "/healthz"
      service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-protocol: "tcp"
      # service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-http-ports: "80"
      # service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-tls-ports: "443"
      service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-tls-passthrough: "true"

      # lb-small, lb-medium, lb-large
      service.beta.kubernetes.io/do-loadbalancer-size-slug: "lb-small"

    # loadBalancerIP: ""
    loadBalancerSourceRanges: []
    externalTrafficPolicy: "Local"

    enableHttp: true
    enableHttps: true

    # specifies the health check node port (numeric port number) for the service. If healthCheckNodePort isn’t specified,
    # the service controller allocates a port from your cluster’s NodePort range.
    # Ref: https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/access-application-cluster/create-external-load-balancer/#preserving-the-client-source-ip
    # healthCheckNodePort: 0

    ports:
      http: 80
      https: 443

    targetPorts:
      http: http
      https: https

    type: LoadBalancer

    nodePorts:
      http: "30021"
      https: "30248"
      tcp: {}
      udp: {}

  admissionWebhooks:
    enabled: true
    # failurePolicy: Fail
    failurePolicy: Ignore
    timeoutSeconds: 10

Cert manager

Install the cert manager using the following command:

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/jetstack/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.6.1/cert-manager.yaml

cluster-issuers.yml

apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: ClusterIssuer
metadata:
  name: letsencrypt-prod
  namespace: kube-system
spec:
  acme:
    # The ACME server URL
    server: https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
    # Email address used for ACME registration
    email: email@domain.com
    # Name of a secret used to store the ACME account private key
    privateKeySecretRef:
      name: letsencrypt-prod
    solvers:
      - dns01:
          route53:
            accessKeyID: ACCESS_KEY_ID
            region: eu-east-1
            role: ""
            secretAccessKeySecretRef:
              key: secret-access-key
              name: prod-route53-credentials-secret
---
apiVersion: cert-manager.io/v1
kind: ClusterIssuer
metadata:
  name: letsencrypt-staging
  namespace: kube-system
spec:
  acme:
    # The ACME server URL
    server: https://acme-staging-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
    # Email address used for ACME registration
    email: email@domain.com
    # Name of a secret used to store the ACME account private key
    privateKeySecretRef:
      name: letsencrypt-staging
    solvers:
      - dns01:
          route53:
            accessKeyID: ACCESS_KEY_ID
            region: eu-east-1
            role: ""
            secretAccessKeySecretRef:
              key: secret-access-key
              name: prod-route53-credentials-secret

cert-manager.yml

installCRDs: true

resources:
  requests:
    cpu: 50m
    memory: 200Mi
  limits:
    cpu: 50m
    memory: 400Mi

webhook:
  resources:
    requests:
      cpu: 10m
      memory: 32Mi
    limits:
      cpu: 10m
      memory: 32Mi

cainjector:
  resources:
    requests:
      cpu: 50m
      memory: 200Mi
    limits:
      cpu: 50m
      memory: 400Mi

There we go - new cluster spun up and ready to get the services and deployments done.

Application

There are only two scripts for the application - service and deployment.

service.yml

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: appname
  namespace: appname
spec:
  selector:
    app: appname
  type: ClusterIP
  ports:
    - port: 80
      targetPort: 8080
      protocol: TCP
      name: http

deployment.yml

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: appname
  namespace: appname
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: appname
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: appname
    spec:
      imagePullSecrets:
        - name: docker-registry
      containers:
        - name: appname
          image: username/appname:$VERSION
          env:
            - name: DB_NAME
              value: "appname-db-name"
            - name: DB_USERNAME
              valueFrom:
                secretKeyRef:
                  name: appname-db-details
                  key: username
            - name: DB_PASSWORD
              valueFrom:
                secretKeyRef:
                  name: appname-db-details
                  key: password
            - name: DB_HOST
              valueFrom:
                secretKeyRef:
                  name: appname-db-details
                  key: host
            - name: DB_PORT
              valueFrom:
                secretKeyRef:
                  name: appname-db-details
                  key: port
            - name: STATIC_ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE
              value: "example"
          imagePullPolicy: Always
          ports:
            - containerPort: 8080
          resources:
            limits:
              cpu: 500m
              memory: 1Gi
            requests:
              cpu: 100m
              memory: 500Mi

If you take a look at the image line, you see $VERSION being used. This is where the magic happens.

Let's bring the Makefile line back:

VERSION=${version} envsubst < k8s/deployment.yml | kubectl apply -n newsbias -f -

The version is grepped from the file, and then using envsubst it is applied to the file, replacing $VERSION with whatever is in the environment variable.

Github Actions

The final task was to put this all together in a Github action.

# Change this to whenever you want this to run
on: [push, pull_request]
name: Workflow
jobs:
  test:
    strategy:
      matrix:
        go-version: [1.17.x]
        os: [ubuntu-latest]
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
    steps:
      - name: Install Go
        uses: actions/setup-go@v2
        with:
          go-version: ${{ matrix.go-version }}
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Test
        run: go test
      - name: Coverage
        run: go test -cover
      - name: Build
        run: go build

  deploy:
    strategy:
      matrix:
        go-version: [ 1.17.x ]
        os: [ ubuntu-latest ]
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
    steps:
      - name: Install Go
        uses: actions/setup-go@v2
        with:
          go-version: ${{ matrix.go-version }}
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Log in to Docker Hub
        uses: docker/login-action@f054a8b539a109f9f41c372932f1ae047eff08c9
        with:
          username: ${{ secrets.DOCKER_USERNAME }}
          password: ${{ secrets.DOCKER_PASSWORD }}
      - name: Docker
        run: make publish
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Install doctl
        uses: digitalocean/action-doctl@v2
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.DIGITALOCEAN_ACCESS_TOKEN }}
      - name: Save DigitalOcean kubeconfig with short-lived credentials
        run: doctl kubernetes cluster kubeconfig save --expiry-seconds 600 digital-ocean-kubernetes-cluster-name
      - name: Deploy to DigitalOcean Kubernetes
        run: make update
      - name: Verify deployment
        run: kubectl rollout status deployment/appname -n appname

The first part is used just for testing, soon I'll add a line to upload the code coverage to CodeCov which I've found to be a great service.

The second part, deploy, is where the magic happens. The steps are above, but basically:

  • Log in to Docker
  • Build and publish the image using the version
  • Checkout the code (so we can run the kubernetes manifests)
  • Install doctl to get Kubernetes access temporarily for a specific cluster (this can also be in a secret to be fully generic)
  • Deploy using make update
  • Verify the deployment

The end result is code is pushed, built and deployed automtically.

Conclusion

These are the scripts and flows I use to get a really simple CI/CD pipeline set up where everything is secure and secrets are secret. I plan to create a public Github repo with these scripts as well as ones for Bitbucket and other providers.

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