Kubernetes/GKE

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Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is a managed, production-ready environment for deploying containerized applications in Kubernetes.

Contents

Deployments

A Deployment's rollout is triggered if and only if the Deployment's Pod template (that is, .spec.template) is changed, for example, if the labels or container images of the template are updated. Other updates, such as scaling the Deployment, do not trigger a rollout.


Trigger a deployment rollout
  • To update the version of nginx in the deployment, execute the following command:
$ kubectl set image deployment.v1.apps/nginx-deployment nginx=nginx:1.9.1 --record
$ kubectl rollout status deployment.v1.apps/nginx-deployment
$ kubectl rollout history deployment nginx-deployment
Trigger a deployment rollback

To roll back an object's rollout, you can use the kubectl rollout undo command.

To roll back to the previous version of the nginx deployment, execute the following command:

$ kubectl rollout undo deployments nginx-deployment
  • View the updated rollout history of the deployment.
$ kubectl rollout history deployment nginx-deployment

deployments "nginx-deployment"
REVISION  CHANGE-CAUSE
2         kubectl set image deployment.v1.apps/nginx-deployment nginx=nginx:1.9.1 --record=true
3         <none>
  • View the details of the latest deployment revision:
$ kubectl rollout history deployment/nginx-deployment --revision=3

The output should look like the example. Your output might not be an exact match but it will show that the current revision has rolled back to nginx:1.7.9.

deployments "nginx-deployment" with revision #3
Pod Template:
  Labels:       app=nginx
        pod-template-hash=3123191453
  Containers:
   nginx:
    Image:      nginx:1.7.9
    Port:       80/TCP
    Host Port:  0/TCP
    Environment:        <none>
    Mounts:     <none>
  Volumes:      <none>

Perform a canary deployment

A canary deployment is a separate deployment used to test a new version of your application. A single service targets both the canary and the normal deployments. And it can direct a subset of users to the canary version to mitigate the risk of new releases. The manifest file nginx-canary.yaml that is provided for you deploys a single pod running a newer version of Nginx than your main deployment. In this task, you create a canary deployment using this new deployment file.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: nginx-canary
  labels:
    app: nginx
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: nginx
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: nginx
        track: canary
        Version: 1.9.1
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: nginx
        image: nginx:1.9.1
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80

The manifest for the Nginx Service you deployed in the previous task uses a label selector to target the Pods with the app: nginx label. Both the normal deployment and this new canary deployment have the app: nginx label. Inbound connections will be distributed by the service to both the normal and canary deployment Pods. The canary deployment has fewer replicas (Pods) than the normal deployment, and thus it is available to fewer users than the normal deployment.

  • Create the canary deployment based on the configuration file.
$ kubectl apply -f nginx-canary.yaml

When the deployment is complete, verify that both the nginx and the nginx-canary deployments are present.

$ kubectl get deployments

Switch back to the browser tab that is connected to the external LoadBalancer service IP and refresh the page. You should continue to see the standard "Welcome to nginx" page.

Switch back to the Cloud Shell and scale down the primary deployment to 0 replicas.

$ kubectl scale --replicas=0 deployment nginx-deployment

Verify that the only running replica is now the Canary deployment:

$ kubectl get deployments

Switch back to the browser tab that is connected to the external LoadBalancer service IP and refresh the page. You should continue to see the standard "Welcome to nginx" page showing that the Service is automatically balancing traffic to the canary deployment.

Note: Session affinity The Service configuration used in the lab does not ensure that all requests from a single client will always connect to the same Pod. Each request is treated separately and can connect to either the normal Nginx deployment or to the nginx-canary deployment. This potential to switch between different versions may cause problems if there are significant changes in functionality in the canary release. To prevent this you can set the sessionAffinity field to ClientIP in the specification of the service if you need a client's first request to determine which Pod will be used for all subsequent connections.

For example:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: nginx
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  sessionAffinity: ClientIP
  selector:
    app: nginx
  ports:
  - protocol: TCP
    port: 60000
    targetPort: 80

Jobs and CronJobs

  • Simple example:
$ kubectl run pi --image perl --restart Never -- perl -Mbignum bpi -wle 'print bpi(2000)'
Parallel Job with fixed completion count
$ cat << EOF > my-app-job.yaml
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
  name: my-app-job
spec:
  completions: 3
  parallelism: 2
  template:
    spec:
[...]
EOF
spec:
  backoffLimit: 4
  activeDeadlineSeconds: 300
Example#1
Create and run a Job

You will create a job using a sample deployment manifest called example-job.yaml that has been provided for you. This Job computes the value of Pi to 2,000 places and then prints the result.

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: Job
metadata:
  # Unique key of the Job instance
  name: example-job
spec:
  template:
    metadata:
      name: example-job
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: pi
        image: perl
        command: ["perl"]
        args: ["-Mbignum=bpi", "-wle", "print bpi(2000)"]
      # Do not restart containers after they exit
      restartPolicy: Never

To create a Job from this file, execute the following command:

$ kubectl apply -f example-job.yaml
$ kubectl describe job
    Host Port:  <none>
    Command:
      perl
    Args:
      -Mbignum=bpi
      -wle
      print bpi(2000)
    Environment:  <none>
    Mounts:       <none>
  Volumes:        <none>
Events:
  Type    Reason            Age   From            Message
  ----    ------            ----  ----            -------
  Normal  SuccessfulCreate  17s   job-controller  Created pod: example-job-gtf7w

$ kubectl get pods
NAME                READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
example-job-gtf7w   0/1     Completed   0          43s
Clean up and delete the Job

When a Job completes, the Job stops creating Pods. The Job API object is not removed when it completes, which allows you to view its status. Pods created by the Job are not deleted, but they are terminated. Retention of the Pods allows you to view their logs and to interact with them.

To get a list of the Jobs in the cluster, execute the following command:

$ kubectl get jobs

NAME          DESIRED   SUCCESSFUL   AGE
example-job   1         1            2m

To retrieve the log file from the Pod that ran the Job execute the following command. You must replace [POD-NAME] with the node name you recorded in the last task

$ kubectl logs [POD-NAME]
3.141592653589793238...

The output will show that the job wrote the first two thousand digits of pi to the Pod log.

To delete the Job, execute the following command:

$ kubectl delete job example-job

If you try to query the logs again the command will fail as the Pod can no longer be found.

Define and deploy a CronJob manifest

You can create CronJobs to perform finite, time-related tasks that run once or repeatedly at a time that you specify.

In this section, we will create and run a CronJob, and then clean up and delete the Job.

Create and run a CronJob

The CronJob manifest file example-cronjob.yaml has been provided for you. This CronJob deploys a new container every minute that prints the time, date and "Hello, World!".

apiVersion: batch/v1beta1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: hello
spec:
  schedule: "*/1 * * * *"
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          containers:
          - name: hello
            image: busybox
            args:
            - /bin/sh
            - -c
            - date; echo "Hello, World!"
          restartPolicy: OnFailure

Note

CronJobs use the required schedule field, which accepts time in the Unix standard crontab format. All CronJob times are in UTC:

  • The first value indicates the minute (between 0 and 59).
  • The second value indicates the hour (between 0 and 23).
  • The third value indicates the day of the month (between 1 and 31).
  • The fourth value indicates the month (between 1 and 12).
  • The fifth value indicates the day of the week (between 0 and 6).

The schedule field also accepts * and ? as wildcard values. Combining / with ranges specifies that the task should repeat at a regular interval. In the example, */1 * * * * indicates that the task should repeat every minute of every day of every month.

To create a Job from this file, execute the following command:

$ kubectl apply -f example-cronjob.yaml
<pre>

To check the status of this Job, execute the following command, where [job_name] is the name of your job:
<pre>
$ kubectl describe job [job_name]

    Image:      busybox
    Port:       <none>
    Host Port:  <none>
    Args:
      /bin/sh
      -c
      date; echo "Hello, World!"
    Environment:  <none>
    Mounts:       <none>
  Volumes:        <none>
Events:
  Type    Reason            Age   From            Message
  ----    ------            ----  ----            -------
  Normal  SuccessfulCreate  35s   job-controller  Created pod: hello-1565824980-sgdnn

View the output of the Job by querying the logs for the Pod. Replace <pod-name> with the name of the Pod you recorded in the last step.

$ kubectl logs <pod-name>

Wed Aug 14 23:23:03 UTC 2019
Hello, World!

To view all job resources in your cluster, including all of the Pods created by the CronJob which have completed, execute the following command:

$ kubectl get jobs

NAME               COMPLETIONS   DURATION   AGE
hello-1565824980   1/1           2s         2m29s
hello-1565825040   1/1           2s         89s
hello-1565825100   1/1           2s         29s

Your job names might be different from the example output. By default, Kubernetes sets the Job history limits so that only the last three successful and last failed job are retained so this list will only contain the most recent three of four jobs.

Clean up and delete the Job

In order to stop the CronJob and clean up the Jobs associated with it you must delete the CronJob.

To delete all these jobs, execute the following command:

$ kubectl delete cronjob hello

To verify that the jobs were deleted, execute the following command:

$ kubectl get jobs
No resources found.

All the Jobs were removed.

Cluster scaling

Think of cluster scaling as a coarse-grain operation that should happen infrequently in pods scaling with deployments as a fine-grain operation that should happen frequently.

Pod conditions that prevent node deletion
  • Not run by a controller
    • e.g., Pods that are not set in a Deployment, ReplicaSet, Job, etc.
  • Has local storage
  • Restricted by constraint rules
  • Pods that have cluster-autoscaler.kubernetes.io/safe-to-evict annotation set to False
  • Pods that have the RestrictivePodDisruptionBudget
  • At the node-level, if the kubernetes.io/scale-down-disabled annotation is set to True
gcloud
  • Create a cluster with autoscaling enabled:
$ gcloud container clusters create <cluster-name> \
  --num-nodes 30 \
  --enable-autoscaling \
  --min-nodes 15 \
  --max-nodes 50 \
  [--zone <compute-zone>]
  • Add a node pool with autoscaling enabled:
$ gcloud container node-pools create <pool-name> \
  --cluster <cluster-name> \
  --enable-autoscaling \
  --min-nodes 15 \
  --max-nodes 50 \
  [--zone <compute-zone>]
  • Enable autoscaling for an existing node pool:
$ gcloud container clusters update \
  <cluster-name> \
  --enable-autoscaling \
  --min-nodes 1 \
  --max-nodes 10 \
  --zone <compute-zone> \
  --node-pool <pool-name>
  • Disable autoscaling for an existing node pool:
$ gcloud container clusters update \
  <cluster-name> \
  --no-enable-autoscaling \
  --node-pool <pool-name> \
  [--zone <compute-zone> --project <project-id>]

Configuring Pod Autoscaling and NodePools

Create a GKE cluster

In Cloud Shell, type the following command to create environment variables for the GCP zone and cluster name that will be used to create the cluster for this lab.

export my_zone=us-central1-a
export my_cluster=standard-cluster-1
  • Configure tab completion for the kubectl command-line tool.
source <(kubectl completion bash)
  • Create a VPC-native Kubernetes cluster:
$ gcloud container clusters create $my_cluster \
   --num-nodes 2 --enable-ip-alias --zone $my_zone
  • Configure access to your cluster for kubectl:
$ gcloud container clusters get-credentials $my_cluster --zone $my_zone
Deploy a sample web application to your GKE cluster

Deploy a sample application to your cluster using the web.yaml deployment file that has been created for you:

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: web
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      run: web
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        run: web
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: gcr.io/google-samples/hello-app:1.0
        name: web
        ports:
        - containerPort: 8080
          protocol: TCP

This manifest creates a deployment using a sample web application container image that listens on an HTTP server on port 8080.

  • To create a deployment from this file, execute the following command:
$ kubectl create -f web.yaml --save-config

  • Create a service resource of type NodePort on port 8080 for the web deployment:
$ kubectl expose deployment web --target-port=8080 --type=NodePort

  • Verify that the service was created and that a node port was allocated:
$ kubectl get service web
NAME   TYPE       CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)          AGE
web    NodePort   10.12.6.154   <none>        8080:30972/TCP   5m4s

Your IP address and port number might be different from the example output.

Configure autoscaling on the cluster

In this section, we will configure the cluster to automatically scale the sample application that we deployed earlier.

Configure autoscaling
  • Get the list of deployments to determine whether your sample web application is still running:
$ kubectl get deployment
NAME   DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
web    1         1         1            1           94s
  • To configure your sample application for autoscaling (and to set the maximum number of replicas to four and the minimum to one, with a CPU utilization target of 1%), execute the following command:
$ kubectl autoscale deployment web --max 4 --min 1 --cpu-percent 1

When you use kubectl autoscale, you specify a maximum and minimum number of replicas for your application, as well as a CPU utilization target.

  • Get the list of deployments to verify that there is still only one deployment of the web application:
$ kubectl get deployment
Inspect the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler object

The kubectl auto-scale command you used in the previous task creates a HorizontalPodAutoscaler object that targets a specified resource, called the scale target, and scales it as needed. The auto-scaler periodically adjusts the number of replicas of the scale target to match the average CPU utilization that you specify when creating the auto-scaler.

  • To get the list of Horizontal Pod Autoscaler resources, execute the following command:
$ kubectl get hpa
NAME   REFERENCE        TARGETS   MINPODS   MAXPODS   REPLICAS   AGE
web    Deployment/web   1%/1%     1         4         1          50s
  • To inspect the configuration of Horizontal Pod Autoscaler in YAML form, execute the following command:
$ kubectl describe horizontalpodautoscaler web
Name:                                                  web
Namespace:                                             default
Labels:                                                <none>
Annotations:                                           <none>
CreationTimestamp:                                     Thu, 15 Aug 2019 12:32:37 -0700
Reference:                                             Deployment/web
Metrics:                                               ( current / target )
  resource cpu on pods  (as a percentage of request):  1% (1m) / 1%
Min replicas:                                          1
Max replicas:                                          4
Deployment pods:                                       1 current / 1 desired
Conditions:
  Type            Status  Reason              Message
  ----            ------  ------              -------
  AbleToScale     True    ReadyForNewScale    recommended size matches current size
  ScalingActive   True    ValidMetricFound    the HPA was able to successfully calculate a replica count from cpu resource utilization (percentage of request)
  ScalingLimited  False   DesiredWithinRange  the desired count is within the acceptable range
Events:           <none>
Test the autoscale configuration

You need to create a heavy load on the web application to force it to scale out. You create a configuration file that defines a deployment of four containers that run an infinite loop of HTTP queries against the sample application web server.

You create the load on your web application by deploying the loadgen application using the loadgen.yaml file that has been provided for you.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: loadgen
spec:
  replicas: 4
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: loadgen
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: loadgen
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: loadgen
        image: k8s.gcr.io/busybox
        args:
        - /bin/sh
        - -c
        - while true; do wget -q -O- http://web:8080; done
  • Get the list of deployments to verify that the load generator is running:
$ kubectl get deployment
NAME      DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
loadgen   4         4         4            4           11s
web       1         1         1            1           9m9s
  • Inspect the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler:
$ kubectl get hpa
NAME   REFERENCE        TARGETS   MINPODS   MAXPODS   REPLICAS   AGE
web    Deployment/web   20%/1%    1         4         1          7m58s

Once the loadgen Pod starts to generate traffic, the web deployment CPU utilization begins to increase. In the example output, the targets are now at 35% CPU utilization compared to the 1% CPU threshold.

  • After a few minutes, inspect the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler again:
$ kubectl get hpa
NAME   REFERENCE        TARGETS   MINPODS   MAXPODS   REPLICAS   AGE
web    Deployment/web   68%/1%    1         4         4          9m39s

$ kubectl get deployment
NAME      DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
loadgen   4         4         4            4           2m44s
web       4         4         4            3           11m
  • To stop the load on the web application, scale the loadgen deployment to zero replicas.
$ kubectl scale deployment loadgen --replicas 0
  • Get the list of deployments to verify that loadgen has scaled down.
$ kubectl get deployment
NAME      DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
loadgen   0         0         0            0           3m25s
web       4         4         4            3           12m

The loadgen deployment should have zero replicas.

Wait 2 to 3 minutes, and then get the list of deployments again to verify that the web application has scaled down to the minimum value of 1 replica that you configured when you deployed the autoscaler.

$ kubectl get deployment
NAME      DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
loadgen   0         0         0            0           4m
web       1         1         1            1           15m

You should now have one deployment of the web application.

Managing node pools

In this section, we will create a new pool of nodes using preemptible instances, and then will constrain the web deployment to run only on the preemptible nodes.

Add a node pool
  • To deploy a new node pool with three preemptible VM instances, execute the following command:
$ gcloud container node-pools create "temp-pool-1" \
  --cluster=$my_cluster --zone=$my_zone \
  --num-nodes "2" --node-labels=temp=true --preemptible

If you receive an error that no preemptible instances are available you can remove the --preemptible option to proceed with the lab.

  • Get the list of nodes to verify that the new nodes are ready:
$ kubectl get nodes
NAME                                                STATUS   ROLES    AGE   VERSION
gke-standard-cluster-1-default-pool-61fba731-01mc   Ready    <none>   21m   v1.12.8-gke.10
gke-standard-cluster-1-default-pool-61fba731-bvfx   Ready    <none>   21m   v1.12.8-gke.10
gke-standard-cluster-1-temp-pool-1-e8966c96-nccc    Ready    <none>   46s   v1.12.8-gke.10
gke-standard-cluster-1-temp-pool-1-e8966c96-pk21    Ready    <none>   43s   v1.12.8-gke.10

You should now have 4 nodes. (Your names will be different from the example output.)

All the nodes that you added have the temp=true label because you set that label when you created the node-pool. This label makes it easier to locate and configure these nodes.

  • To list only the nodes with the temp=true label, execute the following command:
$ kubectl get nodes -l temp=true
NAME                                               STATUS   ROLES    AGE    VERSION
gke-standard-cluster-1-temp-pool-1-e8966c96-nccc   Ready    <none>   2m1s   v1.12.8-gke.10
gke-standard-cluster-1-temp-pool-1-e8966c96-pk21   Ready    <none>   118s   v1.12.8-gke.10
Control scheduling with taints and tolerations

To prevent the scheduler from running a Pod on the temporary nodes, you add a taint to each of the nodes in the temp pool. Taints are implemented as a key-value pair with an effect (such as NoExecute) that determines whether Pods can run on a certain node. Only nodes that are configured to tolerate the key-value of the taint are scheduled to run on these nodes.

To add a taint to each of the newly created nodes, execute the following command. You can use the temp=true label to apply this change across all the new nodes simultaneously.

$ kubectl taint node -l temp=true nodetype=preemptible:NoExecute
node/gke-standard-cluster-1-temp-pool-1-e8966c96-nccc tainted
node/gke-standard-cluster-1-temp-pool-1-e8966c96-pk21 tainted

$ kubectl describe nodes | grep ^Taints
Taints:             <none>
Taints:             <none>
Taints:             nodetype=preemptible:NoExecute
Taints:             nodetype=preemptible:NoExecute

To allow application Pods to execute on these tainted nodes, you must add a tolerations key to the deployment configuration.

Edit the web.yaml file to add the following key in the template's spec section:

tolerations:
- key: "nodetype"
  operator: Equal
  value: "preemptible"

The spec section of the file should look like the following:

...
    spec:
      tolerations:
      - key: "nodetype"
        operator: Equal
        value: "preemptible"
      containers:
      - image: gcr.io/google-samples/hello-app:1.0
        name: web
        ports:
        - containerPort: 8080
          protocol: TCP

To force the web deployment to use the new node-pool add a nodeSelector key in the template's spec section. This is parallel to the tolerations key you just added.

     nodeSelector:
        temp: "true"

Note: GKE adds a custom label to each node called cloud.google.com/gke-nodepool, which contains the name of the node-pool that the node belongs to. This key can also be used as part of a nodeSelector to ensure Pods are only deployed to suitable nodes.

The full web.yaml deployment should now look as follows:

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: web
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      run: web
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        run: web
    spec:
      tolerations:
      - key: "nodetype"
        operator: Equal
        value: "preemptible"
      nodeSelector:
        temp: "true"
      containers:
      - image: gcr.io/google-samples/hello-app:1.0
        name: web
        ports:
        - containerPort: 8080
          protocol: TCP

To apply this change, execute the following command:

kubectl apply -f web.yaml

If you have problems editing this file successfully, you can use the pre-prepared sample file called web-tolerations.yaml instead.

  • Get the list of Pods:
$ kubectl get pods
NAME                   READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
web-7cb566bccd-pkfst   1/1       Running   0          1m

To confirm the change, inspect the running web Pod(s) using the following command:

$ kubectl describe pods -l run=web

A Tolerations section with nodetype=preemptible in the list should appear near the bottom of the (truncated) output.

...
Node-Selectors:  <none>
Tolerations:     node.kubernetes.io/not-ready:NoExecute for 300s
                 node.kubernetes.io/unreachable:NoExecute for 300s
                 nodetype=preemptible
Events:
...

The output confirms that the Pods will tolerate the taint value on the new preemptible nodes, and thus that they can be scheduled to execute on those nodes.

To force the web application to scale out again, scale the loadgen deployment back to four replicas:

$ kubectl scale deployment loadgen --replicas 4

You could scale just the web application directly but using the loadgen app will allow you to see how the different taint, toleration and nodeSelector settings that apply to the web and loadgen applications affect which nodes they are scheduled on.

Get the list of Pods using the wide output format to show the nodes running the Pods:

$ kubectl get pods -o wide

This shows that the loadgen app is running only on default-pool nodes while the web app is running only the preemptible nodes in temp-pool-1.

The taint setting prevents Pods from running on the preemptible nodes so the loadgen application only runs on the default pool. The toleration setting allows the web application to run on the preemptible nodes and the nodeSelector forces the web application Pods to run on those nodes.

NAME        READY STATUS    [...]         NODE
Loadgen-x0  1/1   Running   [...]         gke-xx-default-pool-y0
loadgen-x1  1/1   Running   [...]         gke-xx-default-pool-y2
loadgen-x3  1/1   Running   [...]         gke-xx-default-pool-y3
loadgen-x4  1/1   Running   [...]         gke-xx-default-pool-y4
web-x1      1/1   Running   [...]         gke-xx-temp-pool-1-z1
web-x2      1/1   Running   [...]         gke-xx-temp-pool-1-z2
web-x3      1/1   Running   [...]         gke-xx-temp-pool-1-z3
web-x4      1/1   Running   [...]         gke-xx-temp-pool-1-z4

Deploying Kubernetes Engine via Helm Charts

Ensure your user account has the cluster-admin role in your cluster.

$ kubectl create clusterrolebinding user-admin-binding \
   --clusterrole=cluster-admin \
   --user=$(gcloud config get-value account)
  • Create a Kubernetes service account that is Tiller - the server side of Helm, can be used for deploying charts.
$ kubectl create serviceaccount tiller --namespace kube-system
  • Grant the Tiller service account the cluster-admin role in your cluster:
$ kubectl create clusterrolebinding tiller-admin-binding \
   --clusterrole=cluster-admin \
   --serviceaccount=kube-system:tiller
  • Execute the following commands to initialize Helm using the service account:
$ helm init --service-account=tiller

$ kubectl -n kube-system get pods | grep ^tiller
tiller-deploy-8548d8bd7c-l548r                                 1/1     Running   0          18s

$ helm repo update

$ helm version
Client: &version.Version{SemVer:"v2.6.2", GitCommit:"be3ae4ea91b2960be98c07e8f73754e67e87963c", GitTreeState:"clean"}
Server: &version.Version{SemVer:"v2.6.2", GitCommit:"be3ae4ea91b2960be98c07e8f73754e67e87963c", GitTreeState:"clean"}

Execute the following command to deploy a set of resources to create a Redis service on the active context cluster:

$ helm install stable/redis

A Helm chart is a package of resource configuration files, along with configurable parameters. This single command deployed a collection of resources.

A Kubernetes Service defines a set of Pods and a stable endpoint by which network traffic can access them. In Cloud Shell, execute the following command to view Services that were deployed through the Helm chart:

$ kubectl get services
NAME                               TYPE        CLUSTER-IP     EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)    AGE
kubernetes                         ClusterIP   10.12.0.1      <none>        443/TCP    3m24s
opining-wolverine-redis-headless   ClusterIP   None           <none>        6379/TCP   11s
opining-wolverine-redis-master     ClusterIP   10.12.5.246    <none>        6379/TCP   11s
opining-wolverine-redis-slave      ClusterIP   10.12.14.196   <none>        6379/TCP   11s

A Kubernetes StatefulSet manages the deployment and scaling of a set of Pods, and provides guarantees about the ordering and uniqueness of these Pods. In Cloud Shell, execute the following commands to view a StatefulSet that was deployed through the Helm chart:

$ kubectl get statefulsets
NAME                             DESIRED   CURRENT   AGE
opining-wolverine-redis-master   1         1         59s
opining-wolverine-redis-slave    2         2         59s

A Kubernetes ConfigMap lets you storage and manage configuration artifacts, so that they are decoupled from container-image content. In Cloud Shell, execute the following commands to view ConfigMaps that were deployed through the Helm chart:

$ kubectl get configmaps
NAME                             DATA   AGE
opining-wolverine-redis          3      95s
opining-wolverine-redis-health   6      95s

A Kubernetes Secret, like a ConfigMap, lets you store and manage configuration artifacts, but it's specially intended for sensitive information such as passwords and authorization keys. In Cloud Shell, execute the following commands to view some of the Secret that was deployed through the Helm chart:

$ kubectl get secrets
NAME                      TYPE     DATA   AGE
opining-wolverine-redis   Opaque   1      2m5s

You can inspect the Helm chart directly using the following command:

$ helm inspect stable/redis

If you want to see the templates that the Helm chart deploys you can use the following command:

$ helm install stable/redis --dry-run --debug
Test Redis functionality

You store and retrieve values in the new Redis deployment running in your Kubernetes Engine cluster.

Execute the following command to store the service ip-address for the Redis cluster in an environment variable:

$ export REDIS_IP=$(kubectl get services -l app=redis -o json | jq -r '.items[].spec | select(.selector.role=="master")' | jq -r '.clusterIP')

Retrieve the Redis password and store it in an environment variable:

$ export REDIS_PW=$(kubectl get secret -l app=redis -o jsonpath="{.items[0].data.redis-password}"  | base64 --decode)
  • Display the Redis cluster address and password:
$ echo Redis Cluster Address : $REDIS_IP
$ echo Redis auth password   : $REDIS_PW
  • Open an interactive shell to a temporary Pod, passing in the cluster address and password as environment variables:
$ kubectl run redis-test --rm --tty -i --restart='Never' \
    --env REDIS_PW=$REDIS_PW \
    --env REDIS_IP=$REDIS_IP \
    --image docker.io/bitnami/redis:4.0.12 -- bash
  • Connect to the Redis cluster:
# redis-cli -h $REDIS_IP -a $REDIS_PW
  • Set a key value:
set mykey this_amazing_value

This will display OK if successful.

  • Retrieve the key value:
get mykey

This will return the value you stored indicating that the Redis cluster can successfully store and retrieve data.

Network security

Network policy

A Pod-level firewall restricting access to other Pods and Services. (Disabled by default in GKE.)

Must be enabled:

  • Requires at least 2 nodes of n1-standard-1 or higher (recommended minimum of 3 nodes)
  • Requires nodes to be recreated
  • Enable network policy for a new cluster:
$ gcloud container clusters create <name> \
  --enable-network-policy
  • Enable a network policy for an existing cluster:
$ gcloud container clusters update <name> \
  --update-addons-NetworkPolicy=ENABLED
$ gcloud container cluster update <name> \
  --enable-network-policy
  • Disabling a network policy:
$ gcloud container clusters create <name> \
  --no-enable-network-policy
Writing a network policy
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: NetworkPolicy
metadata:
  name: demo-network-policy
  namespace: default
spec:
  podSelector:
    matchLabels:
      role: demo-app
  policyTypes:
  - Ingress
  - Egress
  ingress:
  - from:
    - ipBlock:
      cidr: 172.17.0.0/16
      except:
      - 172.17.1.0/16
    - namespaceSelector:
        matchLabels:
          project: myproject
    - podSelector:
        matchLabels:
          role: frontend
    ports:
    - protocol: TCP
      port: 6379

  egress:
  - to:
    - ipBlock:
        cidr: 10.0.0.0/24
    ports:
    - protocol: TCP
      port: 5978
Network policy defaults
  • Pros:
    • Limits "attack surface" of Pods in your cluster.
  • Cons:
    • A lot of work to manage (use Istio instead)
metadata:
  name: default-deny
spec:
  podSelector: {}
  policyTypes:
  - Ingress
metadata:
  name: default-deny
spec:
  podSelector: {}
  policyTypes:
  - Egress
metadata:
  name: default-deny
spec:
  podSelector: {}
  policyTypes:
  - Ingress
  - Egress
metadata:
  name: allow-all
spec:
  podSelector: {}
  policyTypes:
  - Ingress
  ingress:
  - {}
metadata:
  name: allow-all
spec:
  podSelector: {}
  policyTypes:
  - Egress
  egress:
  - {}

Setup a private GKE cluster

In the Cloud Shell, enter the following command to review the details of your new cluster:

$ gcloud container clusters describe private-cluster --region us-central1-a
  • The following values appear only under the private cluster:
privateEndpoint 
an internal IP address. Nodes use this internal IP address to communicate with the cluster master.
publicEndpoint 
an external IP address. External services and administrators can use the external IP address to communicate with the cluster master.
  • You have several options to lock down your cluster to varying degrees:
    • The whole cluster can have external access.
    • The whole cluster can be private.
    • The nodes can be private while the cluster master is public, and you can limit which external networks are authorized to access the cluster master.

Without public IP addresses, code running on the nodes cannot access the public Internet unless you configure a NAT gateway such as Cloud NAT.

You might use private clusters to provide services such as internal APIs that are meant only to be accessed by resources inside your network. For example, the resources might be private tools that only your company uses. Or they might be backend services accessed by your frontend services, and perhaps only those frontend services are accessed directly by external customers or users. In such cases, private clusters are a good way to reduce the surface area of attack for your application.

Restrict incoming traffic to Pods

First, we will create a GKE cluster to use for the demos below.

Create a GKE cluster
  • In Cloud Shell, type the following command to set the environment variable for the zone and cluster name:
export my_zone=us-central1-a
export my_cluster=standard-cluster-1
  • Configure kubectl tab completion in Cloud Shell:
source <(kubectl completion bash)
  • Create a Kubernetes cluster (note that this command adds the additional flag --enable-network-policy. This flag allows this cluster to use cluster network policies):
$ gcloud container clusters create $my_cluster \
  --num-nodes 2 \
  --enable-ip-alias \
  --zone $my_zone \
  --enable-network-policy
  • Configure access to your cluster for the kubectl command-line tool:
$ gcloud container clusters get-credentials $my_cluster --zone $my_zone

Run a simple web server application with the label app=hello, and expose the web application internally in the cluster:

$ kubectl run hello-web --labels app=hello \
  --image=gcr.io/google-samples/hello-app:1.0 --port 8080 --expose
Restrict incoming traffic to Pods
  • The following NetworkPolicy manifest file defines an ingress policy that allows access to Pods labeled app: hello from Pods labeled app: foo:
$ cat << EOF > hello-allow-from-foo.yaml
kind: NetworkPolicy
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: hello-allow-from-foo
spec:
  policyTypes:
  - Ingress
  podSelector:
    matchLabels:
      app: hello
  ingress:
  - from:
    - podSelector:
        matchLabels:
          app: foo
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f hello-allow-from-foo.yaml

$ kubectl get networkpolicy
NAME                   POD-SELECTOR   AGE
hello-allow-from-foo   app=hello      7s
Validate the ingress policy
  • Run a temporary Pod called test-1 with the label app=foo and get a shell in the Pod:
$ kubectl run test-1 --labels app=foo --image=alpine --restart=Never --rm --stdin --tty

The kubectl switches used here in conjunction with the run command are important to note:

--stdin (alternatively -i
creates an interactive session attached to STDIN on the container.
--tty (alternatively -t
allocates a TTY for each container in the pod.
--rm 
instructs Kubernetes to treat this as a temporary Pod that will be removed as soon as it completes its startup task. As this is an interactive session it will be removed as soon as the user exits the session.
--label (alternatively -l
adds a set of labels to the pod.
--restart 
defines the restart policy for the Pod
  • Make a request to the hello-web:8080 endpoint to verify that the incoming traffic is allowed:
/ # wget -qO- --timeout=2 http://hello-web:8080
Hello, world!
Version: 1.0.0
Hostname: hello-web-75f66f69d-qgzjb
/ #
  • Now, run a different Pod using the same Pod name but using a label, app=other, that does not match the podSelector in the active network policy. This Pod should not have the ability to access the hello-web application:
$ kubectl run test-1 --labels app=other --image=alpine --restart=Never --rm --stdin --tty
  • Make a request to the hello-web:8080 endpoint to verify that the incoming traffic is not allowed:
/ # wget -qO- --timeout=2 http://hello-web:8080
wget: download timed out
/ #

The request times out.

Restrict outgoing traffic from the Pods

You can restrict outgoing (egress) traffic as you do incoming traffic. However, in order to query internal hostnames (such as hello-web) or external hostnames (such as www.example.com), you must allow DNS resolution in your egress network policies. DNS traffic occurs on port 53, using TCP and UDP protocols.

The following NetworkPolicy manifest file defines a policy that permits Pods with the label app: foo to communicate with Pods labeled app: hello on any port number, and allows the Pods labeled app: foo to communicate to any computer on UDP port 53, which is used for DNS resolution. Without the DNS port open, you will not be able to resolve the hostnames:

$ cat << EOF > foo-allow-to-hello.yaml
kind: NetworkPolicy
apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: foo-allow-to-hello
spec:
  policyTypes:
  - Egress
  podSelector:
    matchLabels:
      app: foo
  egress:
  - to:
    - podSelector:
        matchLabels:
          app: hello
  - to:
    ports:
    - protocol: UDP
      port: 53
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f foo-allow-to-hello.yaml

$ kubectl get networkpolicy
NAME                   POD-SELECTOR   AGE
foo-allow-to-hello     app=foo        7s
hello-allow-from-foo   app=hello      5m
Validate the egress policy
  • Deploy a new web application called hello-web-2 and expose it internally in the cluster:
$ kubectl run hello-web-2 --labels app=hello-2 \
  --image=gcr.io/google-samples/hello-app:1.0 --port 8080 --expose
  • Run a temporary Pod with the app=foo label and get a shell prompt inside the container:
$ kubectl run test-3 --labels app=foo --image=alpine --restart=Never --rm --stdin --tty
  • Verify that the Pod can establish connections to hello-web:8080:
/ # wget -qO- --timeout=2 http://hello-web:8080
Hello, world!
Version: 1.0.0
Hostname: hello-web-75f66f69d-qgzjb
/ #
  • Verify that the Pod cannot establish connections to hello-web-2:8080
wget -qO- --timeout=2 http://hello-web-2:8080

This fails because none of the Network policies you have defined allow traffic to Pods labelled app: hello-2.

  • Verify that the Pod cannot establish connections to external websites, such as www.example.com:
wget -qO- --timeout=2 http://www.example.com

This fails because the network policies do not allow external http traffic (tcp port 80).

/ # ping -c3 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8): 56 data bytes

--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss

Creating Services and Ingress Resources

Create Pods and services to test DNS resolution
  • Create a service called dns-demo with two sample application Pods called dns-demo-1 and dns-demo-2:
$ cat << EOF > dns-demo.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: dns-demo
spec:
  selector:
    name: dns-demo
  clusterIP: None
  ports:
  - name: dns-demo
    port: 1234
    targetPort: 1234
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: dns-demo-1
  labels:
    name: dns-demo
spec:
  hostname: dns-demo-1
  subdomain: dns-demo
  containers:
  - name: nginx
    image: nginx
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: dns-demo-2
  labels:
    name: dns-demo
spec:
  hostname: dns-demo-2
  subdomain: dns-demo
  containers:
  - name: nginx
    image: nginx
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f dns-demo.yaml

$ kubectl get pods
NAME         READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
dns-demo-1   1/1     Running   0          19s
dns-demo-2   1/1     Running   0          19s
Access Pods and services by FQDN
  • Test name resolution for pods and services from the Cloud Shell and from Pods running inside your cluster (note: you can find the IP address for dns-demo-2 by displaying the details of the Pod):
$ kubectl describe pods dns-demo-2

You will see the IP address in the first section of the below the status, before the details of the individual containers:

kubectl describe pods dns-demo-2
Name:               dns-demo-2
Namespace:          default
Priority:           0
PriorityClassName:  <none>
Node:               gke-standard-cluster-1-default-pool-a6c9108e-05m2/10.128.0.5
Start Time:         Mon, 19 Aug 2019 16:58:11 -0700
Labels:             name=dns-demo
Annotations:        [...]
Status:             Running
IP:                 10.8.2.5
Containers:
  nginx:

In the example above, the Pod IP address was 10.8.2.8. You can query just the Pod IP address on its own using the following syntax for the kubectl describe pods command:

$ echo $(kubectl get pod dns-demo-2 --template={{.status.podIP}})
10.8.2.5

The format of the FQDN of a Pod is hostname.subdomain.namespace.svc.cluster.local. The last three pieces (svc.cluster.local) stay constant in any cluster, however, the first three pieces are specific to the Pod that you are trying to access. In this case, the hostname is dns-demo-2, the subdomain is dns-demo, and the namespace is default, because we did not specify a non-default namespace. The FQDN of the dns-demo-2 Pod is therefore dns-demo-2.dns-demo.default.svc.cluster.local.

  • Ping dns-demo-2 from your local machine (or from the Cloud Shell):
$ ping dns-demo-2.dns-demo.default.svc.cluster.local
ping: dns-demo-2.dns-demo.default.svc.cluster.local: Name or service not known

The ping fails because we are not inside the cluster itself.

To get inside the cluster, open an interactive session to Bash running from dns-demo-1.

$ kubectl exec -it dns-demo-1 /bin/bash

Now that we are inside a container in the cluster, our commands run from that context. However, we do not have a tool to ping in this container, so the ping command will not work.

  • Update apt-get and install a ping tool (from within the container):
root@dns-demo-1:/# apt-get update && apt-get install -y iputils-ping
  • Ping dns-demo-2:
root@dns-demo-1:/# ping -c3 dns-demo-2.dns-demo.default.svc.cluster.local
PING dns-demo-2.dns-demo.default.svc.cluster.local (10.8.2.5) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from dns-demo-2.dns-demo.default.svc.cluster.local (10.8.2.5): icmp_seq=1 ttl=62 time=1.46 ms
64 bytes from dns-demo-2.dns-demo.default.svc.cluster.local (10.8.2.5): icmp_seq=2 ttl=62 time=0.397 ms
64 bytes from dns-demo-2.dns-demo.default.svc.cluster.local (10.8.2.5): icmp_seq=3 ttl=62 time=0.387 ms

--- dns-demo-2.dns-demo.default.svc.cluster.local ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 16ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.387/0.748/1.461/0.504 ms

This ping should succeed and report that the target has the IP address you found earlier for the dns-demo-2 Pod.

  • Ping the dns-demo service's FQDN, instead of a specific Pod inside the service:
ping dns-demo.default.svc.cluster.local

This ping should also succeed but it will return a response from the FQDN of one of the two demo-dns Pods. This Pod might be either demo-dns-1 or demo-dns-2.

When you deploy applications, your application code runs inside a container in the cluster, and thus your code can access other services by using the FQDNs of those services. This approach is better than using IP addresses or even Pod names because those are more likely to change.

Deploy a sample workload and a ClusterIP service

In this section, we will create a deployment for a set of Pods within the cluster and then expose them using a ClusterIP service.

Deploy a sample web application to your GKE cluster
  • Deploy a sample web application container image that listens on an HTTP server on port 8080:
$ cat << EOF > hello-v1.yaml
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: hello-v1
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      run: hello-v1
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        run: hello-v1
        name: hello-v1
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: gcr.io/google-samples/hello-app:1.0
        name: hello-v1
        ports:
        - containerPort: 8080
          protocol: TCP
EOF

$ kubectl create -f hello-v1.yaml

$ kubectl get deployments
NAME       DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
hello-v1   3         3         3            3           10s
Define service types in the manifest
  • Deploy a Service using a ClusterIP:
$ cat << EOF > hello-svc.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: hello-svc
spec:
  type: ClusterIP
  selector:
    name: hello-v1
  ports:
  - protocol: TCP
    port: 80
    targetPort: 8080
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f ./hello-svc.yaml

This manifest defines a ClusterIP service and applies it to Pods that correspond to the selector. In this case, the manifest is applied to the hello-v1 Pods that we deployed. This service will automatically be applied to any other deployments with the name: hello-v1 label.

  • Verify that the Service was created and that a Cluster-IP was allocated:
$ kubectl get service hello-svc
NAME        TYPE        CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)   AGE
hello-svc   ClusterIP   10.12.1.159   <none>        80/TCP    29s

No external IP is allocated for this service. Because the Kubernetes Cluster IP addresses are not externally accessible by default, creating this Service does not make your application accessible outside of the cluster.

Test your application
  • Attempt to open an HTTP session to the new Service using the following command:
$ curl hello-svc.default.svc.cluster.local
curl: (6) Could not resolve host: hello-svc.default.svc.cluster.local

The connection should fail because that service is not exposed outside of the cluster.

Now, test the Service from inside the cluster using the interactive shell you have running on the dns-demo-1 Pod. Return to your first Cloud Shell window, which is currently redirecting the STDIN and STDOUT of the dns-demo-1 Pod.

  • Install curl so you can make calls to web services from the command line:
$ apt-get install -y curl
  • Use the following command to test the HTTP connection between the Pods:
$ curl hello-svc.default.svc.cluster.local
Hello, world!
Version: 1.0.0
Hostname: hello-v1-5574c4bff6-72wzc

This connection should succeed and provide a response similar to the output below. Your hostname might be different from the example output.

Convert the service to use NodePort

In this section, we will convert our existing ClusterIP service to a NodePort service and then retest access to the service from inside and outside the cluster.

  • Apply a modified version of our previous hello-svc Service manifest:
$ cat << EOF > hello-nodeport-svc.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: hello-svc
spec:
  type: NodePort
  selector:
    name: hello-v1
  ports:
  - protocol: TCP
    port: 80
    targetPort: 8080
    nodePort: 30100
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f ./hello-nodeport-svc.yaml

This manifest redefines hello-svc as a NodePort service and assigns the service port 30100 on each node of the cluster for that service.

  • Verify that the service type has changed to NodePort:
$ kubectl get service hello-svc
NAME        TYPE       CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)        AGE
hello-svc   NodePort   10.12.1.159   <none>        80:30100/TCP   5m30s

Note that there is still no external IP allocated for this service.

Test the application
  • Attempt to open an HTTP session to the new service:
$ curl hello-svc.default.svc.cluster.local
curl: (6) Could not resolve host: hello-svc.default.svc.cluster.local

The connection should fail because that service is not exposed outside of the cluster.

Return to your first Cloud Shell window, which is currently redirecting the STDIN and STDOUT of the dns-test Pod.

  • Test the HTTP connection between the Pods:
$ curl hello-svc.default.svc.cluster.local

Hello, world!
Version: 1.0.0
Hostname: hello-v1-5574c4bff6-72wzc
Deploy a new set of Pods and a LoadBalancer service

We will now deploy a new set of Pods running a different version of the application so that we can easily differentiate the two services. We will then expose the new Pods as a LoadBalancer Service and access the service from outside the cluster.

  • Create a new deployment that runs version 2 of the sample "hello" application on port 8080:
$ cat << EOF > hello-v2.yaml
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: hello-v2
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      run: hello-v2
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        run: hello-v2
        name: hello-v2
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: gcr.io/google-samples/hello-app:2.0
        name: hello-v2
        ports:
        - containerPort: 8080
          protocol: TCP
EOF

$ kubectl create -f hello-v2.yaml

$ kubectl get deployments
NAME       DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
hello-v1   3         3         3            3           8m22s
hello-v2   3         3         3            3           6s
Define service types in the manifest
  • Deploy a LoadBalancer Service:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: hello-lb-svc
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  selector:
    name: hello-v2
  ports:
  - protocol: TCP
    port: 80
    targetPort: 8080

This manifest defines a LoadBalancer Service, which deploys a GCP Network Load Balancer to provide external access to the service. This service is only applied to the Pods with the name: hello-v2 selector.

$ kubectl apply -f ./hello-lb-svc.yaml
$ kubectl get services
NAME           TYPE           CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP      PORT(S)        AGE
dns-demo       ClusterIP      None          <none>           1234/TCP       18m
hello-lb-svc   LoadBalancer   10.12.3.30    35.193.235.140   80:30980/TCP   95s
hello-svc      NodePort       10.12.1.159   <none>           80:30100/TCP   10m
kubernetes     ClusterIP      10.12.0.1     <none>           443/TCP        21m

$ export LB_EXTERNAL_IP=35.193.235.140

Notice that the new LoadBalancer Service has an external IP. This is implemented using a GCP load balancer and will take a few minutes to create. This external IP address makes the service accessible from outside the cluster. Take note of this External IP address for use below.

Test your application
  • Attempt to open an HTTP session to the new service:
$ curl hello-lb-svc.default.svc.cluster.local
curl: (6) Could not resolve host: hello-lb-svc.default.svc.cluster.local

The connection should fail because that service name is not exposed outside of the cluster. This occurs because the external IP address is not registered with this hostname.

  • Try the connection again using the External IP address associated with the service:
$ curl ${LB_EXTERNAL_IP}
Hello, world!
Version: 2.0.0
Hostname: hello-v2-7db7758bf4-998gf

This time the connection does not fail because the LoadBalancer's external IP address can be reached from outside GCP.

Return to your first Cloud Shell window, which is currently redirecting the STDIN and STDOUT of the dns-demo-1 Pod.

  • Use the following command to test the HTTP connection between the Pods.
root@dns-demo-1:/# curl hello-lb-svc.default.svc.cluster.local
Hello, world!
Version: 2.0.0
Hostname: hello-v2-7db7758bf4-qkb42

The internal DNS name works within the Pod, and you can see that you are accessing the same v2 version of the application as you were from outside of the cluster using the external IP address.

Try the connection again within the Pod using the External IP address associated with the service (replace the IP with the external IP of the service created above):

root@dns-demo-1:/# curl 35.193.235.140
Hello, world!
Version: 2.0.0
Hostname: hello-v2-7db7758bf4-crxzf

The external IP also works from inside Pods running in the cluster and returns a result from the same v2 version of the applications.

Deploy an Ingress resource

We have two services in our cluster for the "hello" application. One service is hosting version 1.0 via a NodePort service, while the other service is hosting version 2.0 via a LoadBalancer service. We will now deploy an Ingress resource that will direct traffic to both services based on the URL entered by the user.

Create an Ingress resource

Ingress is a Kubernetes resource that encapsulates a collection of rules and configuration for routing external HTTP(S) traffic to internal services.

On GKE, Ingress is implemented using Cloud Load Balancing. When you create an Ingress resource in your cluster, GKE creates an HTTP(S) load balancer and configures it to route traffic to your application.

  • Define and deploy an Ingress resource that directs traffic to our web services based on the path entered:
$ cat << EOF > hello-ingress.yaml
apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: hello-ingress
  annotations:
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/rewrite-target: /
spec:
  rules:
  - http:
      Paths:
     - path: /v1
        backend:
          serviceName: hello-svc
          servicePort: 80
      - path: /v2
        backend:
          serviceName: hello-lb-svc
          servicePort: 80
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f hello-ingress.yaml

When we deploy this manifest, Kubernetes creates an ingress resource on your cluster. The ingress controller running in your cluster is responsible for creating an HTTP(S) load balancer to route all external HTTP traffic (on port 80) to the web NodePort service and the LoadBalancer service that we exposed.

Test your application
  • Get the external IP address of the load balancer serving our application:
$ kubectl describe ingress hello-ingress

Name:             hello-ingress
Namespace:        default
Address:          35.244.213.159
Default backend:  default-http-backend:80 (10.8.1.6:8080)
Rules:
  Host  Path  Backends
  ----  ----  --------
  *
        /v1   hello-svc:80 (<none>)
        /v2   hello-lb-svc:80 (<none>)
Annotations:
[...]
  ingress.kubernetes.io/backends:              {"k8s-be-30013--59854b80169ba7aa":"HEALTHY","k8s-be-30100--59854b80169ba7aa":"HEALTHY","k8s-be-30980--59854b80169ba7aa":"HEALTHY"}
[...]
Events:
  Type    Reason  Age    From                     Message
  ----    ------  ----   ----                     -------
  Normal  ADD     6m34s  loadbalancer-controller  default/hello-ingress
  Normal  CREATE  5m16s  loadbalancer-controller  ip: 35.244.213.159

You may have to wait for a few minutes for the load balancer to become active, and for the health checks to succeed, before the external address will be displayed. Repeat the command every few minutes to check if the Ingress resource has finished initializing.

Use the External IP address associated with the Ingress resource, and type the following command, substituting [external_IP] with the Ingress resource's external IP address. Be sure to include the /v1 in the URL path:

$ curl 35.244.213.159/v1
Hello, world!
Version: 1.0.0
Hostname: hello-v1-5574c4bff6-mbn5

The v1 URL is configured in hello-ingress.yaml to point to the hello-svc NodePort service that directs traffic to the v1 application Pods.

Note: GKE might take a few minutes to set up forwarding rules until the Global load balancer used for the Ingress resource is ready to serve your application. In the meantime, you might get errors such as HTTP 404 or HTTP 500 until the load balancer configuration is propagated across the globe.

  • Now, test the v2 URL path from Cloud Shell. Use the External IP address associated with the Ingress resource, and type the following command, substituting [external_IP] with the Ingress resource's external IP address. Be sure to include the /v2 in the URL path.
$ curl [external_IP]/v2
Hello, world!
Version: 2.0.0
Hostname: hello-v2-7db7758bf4-998gf
Inspect the changes to your networking resources in the GCP Console

There are two load balancers listed:

  1. One was created for the external IP of the hello-lb-svc service. This typically has a UID style name and is configured to load balance TCP port 80 traffic to the cluster nodes.
  2. The second was created for the Ingress object and is a full HTTP(S) load balancer that includes host and path rules that match the Ingress configuration. This will have hello-ingress in its name.

Click the load balancer with hello-ingress in the name. This will display the summary information about the protocols, ports, paths and backend services of the Ingress load balancer.

The v2 URL is configured in hello-ingress.yaml to point to the hello-lb-svc LoadBalancer service that directs traffic to the v2 application Pods.

Load balancing objects in GKE

Kubernetes object How implemented in GKE Typical usage scenario
Service of type ClusterIP GKE networking Cluster-internal applications and microservices
Service of type LoadBalancer GCP Network Load Balancer (regional) Application front ends
Ingress object, backed by a Service of type NodePort GCP HTTP(S) Load Balancer (global) Application front ends; gives access to advanced features like Cloud Armor, Identity-Aware Proxy (beta)


Persistent Data and Storage

  • Volume types:
    • emptyDir: Ephemeral. Shares Pod's lifecycle.
    • ConfigMap: Object can be referenced in a volume.
    • Secret: Stores sensitive info, such as passwords.
    • downwardAPI: Makes data about Pods available to containers.
Creating a Pod with an NFS Volume
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: web
spec:
  containers:
  - name: web
    image: nginx
    volumeMounts:
    - mountPath: /mnt/vol
      name: nfs
  volumes:
  - name: nfs
    server: 10.1.2.3
    path: "/"
    readOnly: false
Creating and using a compute engine persistent disk

NOTE: This is the old way of mounting persistent volumes. It is no longer a best practice to do the following. Showing here for completeness.

$ gcloud compute disks create \
  --size=100GB \
  --zone=us-west2-a demo-disk
[...]
spec:
  containers:
  - name: demo-container
    image: gcr.io/hello-app:1.0
    volumeMounts:
    - mountPath: /demo-pod
      name: pd-volume
  volumes:
  - name: pd-volume
    gcePersistentDisk:
      pdName: demo-disk # <- must match gcloud
      fsType: ext4

A better way is to abstract the persistent volume (PV) from the Pod by separating the PV from a Persistent Volume Claim (PVC).

kind: PersistentVolume
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: pd-volume
spec:
  storageClassName: "standard"
  capacity:
    storage: 100G
  accessModes:
  - ReadWriteOnce:
    gcePersistentDisk:
      pdName: demo-disk
      fsType: ext4

Note: PVC StorageClassName must match the PV StorageClassName.

kind: StorageClass
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: standard
provisioner: kubernetes.io/gce-pd
parameters:
  type: pd-standard
  replication-type: none

In GKE, a PVC with not defined storage class will use the above (default) storage class.

  • Example using SSD:
kind: PersistentVolume
[...]
spec:
  storageClassName: "ssd"
---
kind: StorageClass
[...]
metadata:
  name: ssd
parameters:
  type: pd-ssd
Volume Access Modes

Access Modes determine how the Volume will read or write. The types of access modes that are available depend on the volume type.

  • ReadWriteOnce: mounts the volume as read/write to a single node;
  • ReadOnlyMany: mounts a volume as read-only to many nodes; and
  • ReadWriteMany: mounts volumes as read/write to many nodes.

For most applications, persistent disks are mounted as ReadWriteOnce.

Note: GCP persistent disks do not support ReadWriteMany. However, NFS does.

  • Example Persistent Volume Claim (PVC):
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: pd-volume-claim
spec:
  storageClassName: "standard"
  accessModes:
  - ReadWriteOnce:
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 100G
  • Use the above PVC in a Pod (i.e., mount it):
kind: Pod
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: demo-pod
spec:
  containers:
  - name: demo-container
    image: gcr.io/hello-app:1.0
    volumeMounts:
    - mountPath: /demo-pod
      name: pd-volume
  volumes:
  - name: pd-volume
    PersistentVolumeClaim:
      claimName: pd-volume-claim

The above method abstracts...

  • An alternative option is "Dynamic Provisioning".
  • Retain the volume:
[...]
spec:
  persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy: Retain
Regional persistent disks

Increases availability by replicating data between zones:

kind: StorageClass
apiVersion: storage.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: ssd
provisioner: kubernetes.io/gce-pd
parameters:
  type: pd-ssd
  '''replication-type: regional-pd'''
  zones: us-west1-a, us-west1-b

In the above example, if there was an outage in one of the zones, GKE will automatically failover to the other (still up) zone.

You can also use persistent volumes for other controllers, such as deployments and stateful sets. Remember, a deployment is simply a Pod template that runs and maintains a set of identical pods, commonly known as replicas. You can use these deployments for stateless applications. Deployment replicas can share an existing persistent volume using ReadOnlyMany or ReadWriteMany access mode. ReadWriteMany access mode can only be used for storage types that support it, such as NFS systems.

The ReadWriteOnce access mode is not recommended for Deployments because the replicas need to attach and reattach to persistent volumes dynamically. If a first pod needs to detach itself, the second pod needs to be attached first. However, the second pod cannot attach because the first pod is already attached. This creates a deadlock. So neither pod can make progress. Stateful sets resolve this deadlock. Whenever your application needs to maintain state in persistent volumes, managing it with a stateful set rather than a deployment is the way to go.

Configuring Persistent Storage for Kubernetes Engine

Create PVs and PVCs

In this section, we will create a PVC, which triggers Kubernetes to automatically create a PV.

Create and apply a manifest with a PVC

Most of the time, you do not need to directly configure PV objects or create Compute Engine persistent disks. Instead, you can create a PVC, and Kubernetes automatically provisions a persistent disk for you.

  • Check that there are currently not PVCs defined in our cluster:
$ kubectl get persistentvolumeclaim
No resource found.
  • Create a manifest that creates a 30 gigabyte PVC called hello-web-disk, which can be mounted as read-write volume on a single node at a time:
$ cat << EOF > pvc-demo.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: hello-web-disk
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 30Gi
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f pvc-demo.yaml

$ kubectl get persistentvolumeclaim
NAME             STATUS   VOLUME                                     CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
hello-web-disk   Bound    pvc-b26e69ea-c38a-11e9-8f0d-42010a8001e8   30Gi       RWO            standard       4s

Mount and verify GCP persistent disk PVCs in Pods

In this section, we will attach our persistent disk PVC to a Pod. You mount the PVC as a volume as part of the manifest for the Pod.

Mount the PVC to a Pod

The following manifest deploys an Nginx container, attaches the pvc-demo-volume to the Pod, and mounts that volume to the path /var/www/html inside the Nginx container. Files saved to this directory inside the container will be saved to the persistent volume and persist even if the Pod and the container are shutdown and recreated:

$ cat << EOF > 
kind: Pod
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: pvc-demo-pod
spec:
  containers:
    - name: frontend
      image: nginx
      volumeMounts:
      - mountPath: "/var/www/html"
        name: pvc-demo-volume
  volumes:
    - name: pvc-demo-volume
      persistentVolumeClaim:
        claimName: hello-web-disk
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f pod-volume-demo.yaml

$ kubectl get pods
NAME           READY   STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
pvc-demo-pod   0/1     ContainerCreating   0          13s

If you do above quickly after creating the Pod, you will see the status listed as "ContainerCreating" while the volume is mounted before the status changes to "Running".

  • Verify the PVC is accessible within the Pod:
$ kubectl exec -it pvc-demo-pod -- sh
  • Create a simple text message as a web page in the Pod:
# echo "Test webpage in a persistent volume!" > /var/www/html/index.html
# chmod +x /var/www/html/index.html
Test the persistence of the PV

Let's delete the Pod from the cluster, confirm that the PV still exists, then redeploy the Pod and verify the contents of the PV remain intact.

  • Delete the pvc-demo-pod:
$ kubectl delete pod pvc-demo-pod
<pre>

* List the Pods in the cluster:
<pre>
$ kubectl get pods
No resources found.
$ kubectl get persistentvolumeclaim
NAME             STATUS   VOLUME                                     CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
hello-web-disk   Bound    pvc-b26e69ea-c38a-11e9-8f0d-42010a8001e8   30Gi       RWO            standard       3m55s

Our PVC still exists, and was not deleted when the Pod was deleted.

  • Redeploy the pvc-demo-pod:
$ kubectl apply -f pod-volume-demo.yaml
$ kubectl get pods
NAME           READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pvc-demo-pod   1/1     Running   0          3m48s

The Pod will deploy and the status will change to "Running" faster this time because the PV already exists and does not need to be created.

  • Verify the PVC is still accessible within the Pod,:
$ kubectl exec -it pvc-demo-pod -- sh
# cat /var/www/html/index.html
Test webpage in a persistent volume!

The contents of the persistent volume were not removed, even though the Pod was deleted from the cluster and recreated.

Create StatefulSets with PVCs

In this section, we use our PVC in a StatefulSet. A StatefulSet is like a Deployment, except that the Pods are given unique identifiers.

Release the PVC
  • Before we can use the PVC with the StatefulSet, we must delete the Pod that is currently using it:
$ kubectl delete pod pvc-demo-pod
Create a StatefulSet
  • Create a StatefulSet that includes a LoadBalancer service and three replicas of a Pod containing an Nginx container and a volumeClaimTemplate for 30 gigabyte PVCs with the name hello-web-disk. The Nginx containers mount the PVC called hello-web-disk at /var/www/html as in the previous task:
$ cat << EOF > statefulset-demo.yaml
kind: Service
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: statefulset-demo-service
spec:
  ports:
  - protocol: TCP
    port: 80
    targetPort: 9376
  type: LoadBalancer
---

kind: StatefulSet
apiVersion: apps/v1
metadata:
  name: statefulset-demo
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: MyApp
  serviceName: statefulset-demo-service
  replicas: 3
  updateStrategy:
    type: RollingUpdate
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: MyApp
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: stateful-set-container
        image: nginx
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
          name: http
        volumeMounts:
        - name: hello-web-disk
          mountPath: "/var/www/html"
  volumeClaimTemplates:
  - metadata:
      name: hello-web-disk
    spec:
      accessModes: [ "ReadWriteOnce" ]
      resources:
        requests:
          storage: 30Gi
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f statefulset-demo.yaml

You now have a StatefulSet running behind a service named statefulset-demo-service.

Verify the connection of Pods in StatefulSets
  • View the details of the StatefulSet:
$ kubectl describe statefulset statefulset-demo

Note the event status at the end of the output. The Service and StatefulSet created successfully.

$ kubectl get pods
NAME                 READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
statefulset-demo-0   1/1     Running   0          110s
statefulset-demo-1   1/1     Running   0          86s
statefulset-demo-2   1/1     Running   0          65s
  • List the PVCs associated with the above StatefulSet:
$ kubectl get pvc
NAME                                STATUS   VOLUME                                     CAPACITY   ACCESS MODES   STORAGECLASS   AGE
hello-web-disk                      Bound    pvc-b26e69ea-c38a-11e9-8f0d-42010a8001e8   30Gi       RWO            standard       10m
hello-web-disk-statefulset-demo-0   Bound    pvc-d41e3ebd-c38b-11e9-8f0d-42010a8001e8   30Gi       RWO            standard       2m13s
hello-web-disk-statefulset-demo-1   Bound    pvc-e1fa6ed4-c38b-11e9-8f0d-42010a8001e8   30Gi       RWO            standard       109s
hello-web-disk-statefulset-demo-2   Bound    pvc-ee789c40-c38b-11e9-8f0d-42010a8001e8   30Gi       RWO            standard       88s

The original hello-web-disk is still there and you can now see the individual PVCs that were created for each Pod in the new StatefulSet Pod.

  • View the details of the first PVC in the StatefulSet:
$ kubectl describe pvc hello-web-disk-statefulset-demo-0
Verify the persistence of Persistent Volume connections to Pods managed by StatefulSets

In this section, we will verify the connection of Pods in StatefulSets to particular PVs as the Pods are stopped and restarted.

  • Verify that the PVC is accessible within the Pod:
$ kubectl exec -it statefulset-demo-0 -- sh
  • Verify that there is no index.html text file in the /var/www/html directory:
# cat /var/www/html/index.html
cat: /var/www/html/index.html: No such file or directory
  • Create a simple text message as a web page in the Pod:
$ echo "Test webpage in a persistent volume!" > /var/www/html/index.html
$ chmod +x /var/www/html/index.html
  • Delete the Pod where you updated the file on the PVC:
kubectl delete pod statefulset-demo-0
  • List the Pods in the cluster:
$ kubectl get pods
NAME                 READY   STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
statefulset-demo-0   0/1     ContainerCreating   0          11s
statefulset-demo-1   1/1     Running             0          6m1s
statefulset-demo-2   1/1     Running             0          5m40s

You will see that the StatefulSet is automatically restarting the statefulset-demo-0 Pod. Wait until the Pod status shows that it is running again.

  • Connect to the shell on the new statefulset-demo-0 Pod:
$ kubectl exec -it statefulset-demo-0 -- sh
# cat /var/www/html/index.html
Test webpage in a persistent volume!

The StatefulSet restarts the Pod and reconnects the existing dedicated PVC to the new Pod ensuring that the data for that Pod is preserved.

StatefulSets

Stateful sets are useful for stateful applications. Stateful sets run and maintain a set of pods just like deployments do. A stateful set object defines the desired state and its controller achieves it. However, unlike deployments, stateful sets maintain a persistent identity for each pod. Each pod in a stateful set maintains a persistent identity and has an ordinal index with the relevant pod name, a stable hostname and stably identified persistent storage that is linked to the ordinal index.

An ordinal index is just a unique sequential number that is assigned to each pod in the stateful set. This number defines the pod's position in the sets sequence of pods. Deployment, scaling, and updates are ordered using the ordinal index of the pods within a stateful set. For example, if a stateful set named Demo launches three replicas, it will launch pod names Demo-0, Demo-1, and Demo-2 sequentially. This means that all of its predecessors must be running and ready before an action is taken on a newer pod. For example, if Demo-0 is not running and ready, Demo-1 will not be launched. If Demo-0 fails after Demo-1 is running and ready, but before the creation of Demo-2, Demo-2 will not be launched until Demo-0 is relaunched and becomes running and ready. Scaling and ruling updates happen in reverse order. Which means Demo-2 would be changed first. This depends on the pod management policy being set to the default. Ordered ready state. If you want to launch pods in parallel without waiting for the pods to maintain running and ready state, change the pod management policy to parallel. As the name suggests stateful sets are useful for stateful applications. With stable storage, stateful sets use a unique persistent volume claim for each pod. So that each pod can maintain its own individual state. It must have reliable long-term storage to which no other pods write. These persistent volume claims use read write once access mode for applications.

  • StatefulSet Example (with associated Service):
kind: Service
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: demo-service
  labels:
    app: demo
spec:
  ports:
   - port: 80
     name: web
  clusterIP: None
  selector:
    app: demo
---
kind: StatefulSet
apiVersion: apps/v1
metadata:
  name: demo-statefulset
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: demo
  serviceName: demo-service
  replicas: 3
  updateStrategy:
    type: RollingUpdate
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: demo
[...]
  spec:
    containers:
    - name: demo-container
      image: k8s.gcr.io/demo:0.1
      ports:
      - containerPort: 80
        name: web
      volumeMounts:
      - name: www
        mountPath: /usr/share/web
  volumeClaimTemplates:
  - metadata:
    name: demo-pvc
    spec:
      accessModes: ["ReadWriteOnce"]
      resources:
        requests:
          storage: 1Gi

In the above example, we are defining a "headless service" by specifying "None" for the clusterIP.

ConfigMaps and Secrets

ConfigMaps

$ mkdir -p demo/
$ wget https://example.com/color.properties -O demo/color.properties
$ wget https://example.com/ui.properties -O demo/ui.properties
$ kubectl create configmap demo --from-file=demo/
kind: ConfigMap
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: demo
data:
  color.properties: |-
    color.good=green
    color.bad=red
  ui.properties: |-
    resolution=high
  • Using a ConfigMap in Pod commands:
kind: Pod
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: demo-pod
spec:
  containers:
  - name: demo-container
    image: k8s.gcr.io/busybox
    command: ["/bin/sh", "-c", "echo $(VARIABLE_DEMO)"]
    env:
    - name: VARIABLE_DEMO
      valueFrom:
        configMapKeyRef:
          name: demo
          key: my.key
  • Using a ConfigMap by creating a Volume:
kind: Pod
[...]
spec:
  containers:
  - name: demo-container
    image: k8s.gcr.io/busybox
    volumeMounts:
    - name: config-volume
      mountPath: /etc/config
  volumes:
  - name: config-volume
    configMap:
      name: demo

Secrets

Types of Secrets
  • Generic: used when creating secrets from files directories or literal values.
  • TLS: uses an existing public-private encryption key pair. To create one of these, you must give k8s the public key certificate encoded in PEM format, and you must also supply the private key of that certificate.
  • Docker registry: used to pass credentials for an image registry to kubelet so it can pull a private image from the Docker registry on behalf of your Pod.

In GKE, the Google Container Registry (GCR) integrates with Cloud Identity and Access Management, so you may not need to use the "Docker registry" Secret type.

Creating a generic Secret
  • Create a Secret using literal values:
$ kubectl create secret generic demo \
  --from-literal user=admin \
  --from-literal password=1234
  • Create a Secret using files:
$ kubectl create secret generic demo \
  --from-file=./username.txt \
  --from-file=./password.txt
  • Create a Secret using naming keys:
$ kubectl create secret generic demo \
  --from-file=User=./username.txt \
  --from-file=Password=./password.txt
Using a Secret
  • Secret environment variable:
[...]
kind: Pod
spec:
  containers:
  - name: mycontainer
    image: redis
    env:
    - name: SECRET_USERNAME
      valueFrom:
        secretKeyRef:
          name: demo-secret
          key: username
    - name: SECRET_PASSWORD
      valueFrom:
        secretKeyRef:
          name: demo-secret
          key: password
  • Secret volume:
[...]
kind: Pod
spec:
  containers:
  - name: mycontainer
    image: redis
    volumeMounts:
    - name: storagesecrets
      mountPath: "/etc/secrets"
      readOnly: true
  volumes:
  - name: storagesecrets
    secret:
      secretName: demo-secret

Working with Kubernetes Engine Secrets and ConfigMaps

Set up Cloud Pub/Sub and deploy an application to read from the topic
  • Set the environment variables for the pub/sub components.
$ export my_pubsub_topic=echo
$ export my_pubsub_subscription=echo-read
  • Create a Cloud Pub/Sub topic named "echo" and a subscription named "echo-read" that is associated with that topic:
$ gcloud pubsub topics create $my_pubsub_topic
$ gcloud pubsub subscriptions create $my_pubsub_subscription \
  --topic=$my_pubsub_topic
Deploy an application to read from Cloud Pub/Sub topics

First, create a deployment with a container that can read from Cloud Pub/Sub topics. Since specific permissions are required to subscribe to and read from Cloud Pub/Sub topics, this container needs to be provided with credentials in order to successfully connect to Cloud Pub/Sub.

  • Create a Deployment for use with our Cloud Pub/Sub topic:
$ cat << EOF > pubsub.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: pubsub
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: pubsub
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: pubsub
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: subscriber
        image: gcr.io/google-samples/pubsub-sample:v1
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f pubsub.yaml
$ kubectl get pods -l app=pubsub
NAME                      READY   STATUS   RESTARTS   AGE
pubsub-65dbdb56f5-5xjp4   0/1     Error    2          36s

Notice the status of the Pod. It has an error and has restarted several times.

  • Inspect the logs for the Pod:
$ kubectl logs -l app=pubsub
StatusCode.PERMISSION_DENIED, User not authorized to perform this action.

The error message displayed at the end of the log indicates that the application does not have permissions to query the Cloud Pub/Sub service.

Create service account credentials

To fix the above permission issue, create a new service account and grant it access to the pub/sub subscription that the test application is attempting to use. Instead of changing the service account of the GKE cluster nodes, generate a JSON key for the service account, and then securely pass the JSON key to the Pod via Kubernetes Secrets.

  • In the GCP Console, on the Navigation menu, click IAM & admin > Service Accounts.
  • Click + Create Service Account.
  • In the Service Account Name text box, enter pubsub-app and then click Create.
  • In the Role drop-down list, select Pub/Sub > Pub/Sub Subscriber.
  • Confirm the role is listed, and then click Continue.
  • Click + Create Key.
  • Select JSON as the key type, and then click Create.

A JSON key file containing the credentials of the service account will download to your computer. You can see the file in the download bar at the bottom of your screen. We will use this key file to configure the sample application to authenticate to Cloud Pub/Sub API.

  • Click Close and then click Done.

On your hard drive, locate the JSON key that you just downloaded and rename the file to credentials.json.

  • Create a Kubernetes Secret named pubsub-key using the downloaded credentials (JSON file):
$ kubectl create secret generic pubsub-key \
  --from-file=key.json=$HOME/credentials.json

This command creates a Secret named pubsub-key that has a key.json value containing the contents of the private key that you downloaded from the GCP Console.

Configure the application with the secret

Update the deployment to include the following changes:

  • Add a volume to the Pod specification. This volume contains the secret.
  • The secrets volume is mounted in the application container.
  • The GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable is set to point to the key file in the secret volume mount.
  • The GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable is automatically recognized by Cloud Client Libraries, in this case, the Cloud Pub/Sub client for Python.
  • Update the previous Deployment:
$ cat << EOF > pubsub-secret.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: pubsub
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: pubsub
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: pubsub
    spec:
      volumes:
      - name: google-cloud-key
        secret:
          secretName: pubsub-key
      containers:
      - name: subscriber
        image: gcr.io/google-samples/pubsub-sample:v1
        volumeMounts:
        - name: google-cloud-key
          mountPath: /var/secrets/google
        env:
        - name: GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS
          value: /var/secrets/google/key.json
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f pubsub-secret.yaml

$ kubectl get pods -l app=pubsub
NAME                      READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pubsub-687959fd65-kwhb5   1/1     Running   0          40s
Test receiving Cloud Pub/Sub messages

Now that we configured the application, we can publish a message to the Cloud Pub/Sub topic we created earlier in the lab:

$ gcloud pubsub topics publish $my_pubsub_topic --message="Hello, world!"

messageIds:
- '697037622972840'

Within a few seconds, the message should be picked up by the application and printed to the output stream.

  • Inspect the logs from the deployed Pod:
$ kubectl logs -l app=pubsub
Pulling messages from Pub/Sub subscription...
[2019-08-20 21:46:18.395126] Received message: ID=697037622972840 Data=b'Hello, world!'
[2019-08-20 21:46:18.395205] Processing: 697037622972840
[2019-08-20 21:46:21.398350] Processed: 697037622972840

Working with ConfigMaps

ConfigMaps bind configuration files, command-line arguments, environment variables, port numbers, and other configuration artifacts to your Pods' containers and system components at runtime. ConfigMaps enable you to separate your configurations from your Pods and components. However, ConfigMaps are not encrypted, making them inappropriate for credentials. This is the difference between Secrets and ConfigMaps: secrets are better suited for confidential or sensitive information, such as credentials. ConfigMaps are better suited for general configuration information, such as port numbers.

Use the kubectl command to create ConfigMaps

You use kubectl to create ConfigMaps by following the pattern kubectl create configmap [NAME] [DATA] and adding a flag for file (--from-file) or literal (--from-literal)

  • Start with a simple literal in the following kubectl command:
kubectl create configmap sample --from-literal=message=hello
  • See how Kubernetes ingested the ConfigMap:
$ kubectl describe configmaps sample

Name:         sample
Namespace:    default
Labels:       <none>
Annotations:  <none>

Data
====
message:
----
hello
Events:  <none>
  • Create a ConfigMap from a file:
$ cat << EOF >sample2.properties
message2=world
foo=bar
meaningOfLife=42
EOF

$ kubectl create configmap sample2 --from-file=sample2.properties

$ kubectl describe configmaps sample2

Name:         sample2
Namespace:    default
Labels:       <none>
Annotations:  <none>

Data
====
sample2.properties:
----
message2=world
foo=bar
meaningOfLife=42

Events:  <none>
Use manifest files to create ConfigMaps

You can also use a YAML configuration file to create a ConfigMap.

  • Create a ConfigMap definition called sample3 (we will use this ConfigMap later to demonstrate two different ways to expose the data inside a container):
$ cat << EOF > config-map-3.yaml
apiVersion: v1
data:
  airspeed: africanOrEuropean
  meme: testAllTheThings
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: sample3
  namespace: default
  selfLink: /api/v1/namespaces/default/configmaps/sample3

$ kubectl apply -f config-map-3.yaml
$ kubectl describe configmaps sample3
Name:         sample3
Namespace:    default
Labels:       <none>
Annotations:  kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration:
                {"apiVersion":"v1","data":{"airspeed":"africanOrEuropean","meme":"testAllTheThings"},"kind":"ConfigMap","metadata":{"annotations":{},"name...

Data
====
airspeed:
----
africanOrEuropean
meme:
----
testAllTheThings
Events:  <none>

Now we have some non-secret, unencrypted, configuration information properly separated from our application and available to our cluster. We have done this using ConfigMaps in three different ways to demonstrate the various options, however, in practice, you typically pick one method, most likely the YAML configuration file approach. Configuration files provide a record of the values that you have stored so that you can easily repeat the process in the future.

Next, let's access this information from within our application.

Use environment variables to consume ConfigMaps in containers

In order to access ConfigMaps from inside Containers using environment variables, the Pod definition must be updated to include one or more configMapKeyRefs.

Below is an updated version of the Cloud Pub/Sub demo Deployment that includes an additional env: setting at the end of the file to import environmental variables from the ConfigMap into the container:

        - name: INSIGHTS
          valueFrom:
            configMapKeyRef:
              name: sample3
              key: meme
  • Reapply the updated configuration file:
kubectl apply -f pubsub-configmap.yaml

Now our application has access to an environment variable called INSIGHTS, which has a value of testAllTheThings.

  • Verify that the environment variable has the correct value:
$ kubectl get pods
NAME                      READY   STATUS        RESTARTS   AGE
pubsub-6549d6dffc-w7lbd   1/1     Running       0          35s

$ kubectl exec -it pubsub-6549d6dffc-w7lbd -- sh
# printenv | grep ^INSIGHTS
INSIGHTS=testAllTheThings
Use mounted volumes to consume ConfigMaps in containers

You can populate a volume with the ConfigMap data instead of (or in addition to) storing it in an environment variable.

In this Deployment, the ConfigMap named sample-3 that we created earlier is also added as a volume called config-3 in the Pod spec. The config-3 volume is then mounted inside the container on the path /etc/config. The original method using Environment variables to import ConfigMaps is also configured.

  • Update the Deployment:
$ cat << EOF > pubsub-configmap2.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: pubsub
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: pubsub
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: pubsub
    spec:
      volumes:
      - name: google-cloud-key
        secret:
          secretName: pubsub-key
      - name: config-3
        configMap:
          name: sample3
      containers:
      - name: subscriber
        image: gcr.io/google-samples/pubsub-sample:v1
        volumeMounts:
        - name: google-cloud-key
          mountPath: /var/secrets/google
        - name: config-3
          mountPath: /etc/config
        env:
        - name: GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS
          value: /var/secrets/google/key.json
        - name: INSIGHTS
          valueFrom:
            configMapKeyRef:
              name: sample3
              key: meme
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f pubsub-configmap2.yaml
  • Reconnect to the container's shell session to see if the value in the ConfigMap is accessible (note: the Pod names will have changed):
$ kubectl get pods
NAME                      READY   STATUS        RESTARTS   AGE
pubsub-5fcc8df7b6-p5d9x   1/1     Running       0          5s
pubsub-6549d6dffc-w7lbd   1/1     Terminating   0          3m

$ kubectl exec -it pubsub-5fcc8df7b6-p5d9x -- sh
# cd /etc/config
# ls
airspeed  meme
# cat airspeed
africanOrEuropean

Access Control and Security in Kubernetes and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

There are two main ways to authorize in GKE (and you really need both):

  1. Cloud IAM: Project and cluster level access
  2. RBAC: Cluster and namespace level access

The API server authenticates in different ways:

  • OpenID connect tokens [recommended]
  • x509 client certificates [suggest disabling]
  • Static passwords [suggest disabling]

In GKE, x509 and static passwords are disabled by default (in k8s v1.12+). OpenID Connect is enabled by default.

Cloud IAM

Three elements are defined in Cloud IAM access control:

  1. Who? - Identity of the person making the request
  2. What? - Set of permissions that are granted
  3. Which? - Which resources this policy applies to
GKE predefined Cloud IAM roles

Provides granular access to Kubernetes resources.

  • GKE Viewer: Read-only permissions to cluster and k8s resources
  • GKE Developer: Full access to k8s cluster within resources
  • GKE Admin: Full access to clusters and their k8s resources
  • GKE Cluster Admin: Create/delete/update/view clusters. No access to k8s resources.
  • GKE Host Service Agent User: Only for service account. Manage network resource in a shared VPC.

RBAC

Three k8s RBAC concepts:

  1. Subjects (Who?)
  2. Resources (Which?)
  3. Verbs (What?)

Roles connect Resources to Verbs. Role Bindings connect roles to subjects.

  • A role contains rules that represent a set of permissions. For example:
kind: Role
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  namespace: default
  name: demo-role
rules:
  - apiGroups: [""]
    resource: ["pods"]
    verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]

Note: Only one namespace per role is allowed.

  • A Cluster Role grants permissions at the cluster level. For example:
kind: ClusterRole
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: demo-clusterrole
rules:
  - apiGroups: [""]
    resource: ["storageclasses"]
    verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]

Note: No need to define namespace in Cluster Role, since it applies at the cluster-level.

  • More examples:
rules:
- apiGroups: [""]
  resources: ["pods"]
  verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]
---
rules:
- apiGroups: [""]
  resources: ["pods", "pods/log"]
  verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]
---
rules:
- apiGroups: [""]
  resources: ["pods"]
  resourceNames: ["demo-pod"]
  verbs: ["patch", "update"]
---
rule:
- nonResourceURLs: ["metrics/", "/metrics/*"]
  verbs: ["get", "post"]

Note: The last example ("nonResourceURLs") is a rule unique to ClusterRoles.

Attach Roles to Role Bindings
kind: RoleBinding
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  namespace: default
  name: demo-rolebinding
subjects:
- kind: User
  name: "bob@example.com"
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
roleRef:
  kind: Role
  name: demo-role
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  • Example Cluster Role Binding:
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: demo-clusterrolebinding
subjects:
- kind: User
  name: "admin@example.com"
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
roleRef:
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: demo-clusterrole
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  • Example of how to refer to different subject types:
subjects:
- kind: User
  name: "bob@example.com"
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
---
subjects:
- kind: Group
  name: "Developers"
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
---
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: default
  namespace: kube-system
---
subjects:
- kind: Group
  name: system.serviceaccounts
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
---
subjects:
- kind: Group
  name: system.serviceaccounts
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io:qa # <- "qa" namespace
---
subjects:
- kind: Group
  name: system.authenticated
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io

Note: Not all resources are namespaced:

$ kubectl api-resources --namespaced=true --output=name | head
bindings
configmaps
endpoints
events

$ kubectl api-resources --namespaced=false --output=name | head -4
componentstatuses
namespaces
nodes
persistentvolumes

Kubernetes Control Plane Security

  • Initiate credential rotation:
$ gcloud container clusters update <name> \
  --start-credential-rotation
  • Complete credential rotation:
$ gcloud container clusters update <name> \
  --complete-credential-rotation
  • Initiate IP rotation:
$ gcloud container clusters update <name> \
  --start-ip-rotation
  • Complete IP rotation:
$ gcloud container clusters update <name> \
  --complete-ip-rotation
Protect your metadata
  • Restrict compute.instances.get permission for nodes.
  • Disable legacy Compute Engine API endpoint. (note: Compute Engine API endpoints using versions 0.1 and V1 beta-1, support querying of metadata.)
    The V1 APIs restrict the retrieval of metadata. Starting from GKE version 1.12, the legacy Compute Engine metadata endpoints are disabled by default and with earlier versions, they can only be disabled by creating a new cluster or adding a new node port to an existing cluster.
  • Enable metadata concealment (temporary).
    This is basically a firewall that prevents Pods from accessing a node's metadata. It does this by restricting access to Kube ENV, which contains kube credentials and the virtual machines instance identity token. Note that this is a temporary solution that will be deprecated as better security improvements are developed in the future.

SEE: "Protecting Cluster Metadata"

Pod Security

Use security context to limit privileges to containers.

kind: Pod
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: security-context-demo
spec:
  securityContext:
    runAsUser: 1000
    fsGroup: 2000
...

Use a Pod security policy to apply security contexts:

  • A policy is a set of restrictions, requirements, and defaults.
  • For a Pod to be admitted to the cluster, all conditions must be fulfilled for a Pod to be created or updated. (note: rules are only applied when the Pod is being created or updated.)
  • PodSecurityPolicy controller is an admission controller.
  • The controller validates and modifies requests against one or more PodSecurityPolicies.

There is also an extra step called "admission control". A validating or non-mutating admission controller just validates requests. A mutating and mission controller can modify requests if necessary and can also validate requests. A request can be passed through multiple controllers, and if the request fails at any point the entire request is rejected immediately and the end-user receives an error. The pod security policy admission controller acts on the creation and modification of pods and determines whether the pod should be admitted based on the requested security context, and the available pod security policies. Note that these policies are enforced during the creation or update of a pod, but a security context is enforced by the Container Runtime.

  • Pod security policy example:
kind: PodSecurityPolicy
apiVersion: policy/v1beta1
metadata:
  name: demo-psp
spec:
  privileged: false
  allowPriviligeEscalation: false
  volumes:
  - 'configMap'
  - 'emptyDir'
  - 'projected'
  - 'secret'
  - 'persistentVolumeClaim'
  hostNetwork: false
  hostIPC: false
  runAsUser:
    rule: 'MustRunAsNonRoot'
  seLinux:
    rule: 'RunAsAny'
  readOnlyRootFilesystem: false
  • Authorize (the above) Pod security policy:
kind: ClusterRole
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: psp-clusterrole
rules:
- apiGroups:
  - policy
  resources:
  - podsecuritypolicies
  resourceNames:
  - demo-psp
  verbs:
  - use
  • Now, define a Role Binding:
kind: RoleBinding
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: psp-rolebinding
  namespace: demo
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: psp-clusterrole
subjects:
- apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: Group
  name: system:serviceaccounts
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: service@example.com
  namespace: demo

A Pod Security Policy controller must be enabled on a GKE cluster:

$ gcloud container clusters update <name> \
  --enable-pod-security-policy

WARNING: Careful, the order here matters. If you enable the pod security policy controller before defining any policies, you have just commanded that nothing is allowed to be deployed.

GKE recommended best practices
  • Use container-optimized OS (COS)
  • Enable automatic node upgrades (to run the latest available version of k8s)
  • Use private cluster and master authorized networks(i.e., they do not contain external IP addresses)
  • Use encrypted Secrets for sensitive info
  • Assign roles to groups, not users.
  • Do not enable Kubernetes Dashboard

Implementing Role-Based Access Control With Kubernetes Engine

  • List the current namespaces in the cluster:
$ kubectl get namespaces
NAME          STATUS   AGE
default       Active   77s
kube-public   Active   77s
kube-system   Active   77s
  • Create a Namespace called "production":
$ cat << EOF > my-namespace.yaml
kind: Namespace
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: production
EOF

$ kubectl create -f ./my-namespace.yaml

$ kubectl get namespaces
NAME          STATUS   AGE
default       Active   2m16s
kube-public   Active   2m16s
kube-system   Active   2m16s
production    Active   7s

$ kubectl describe namespaces production
Name:         production
Labels:       <none>
Annotations:  <none>
Status:       Active

No resource quota.

No resource limits.
Create a Resource in a Namespace

If you do not specify the namespace of a Pod it will use the namespace default.

  • Create a Pod that contains an Nginx container and specify which namespace to deploy it to:
$ cat << EOF > my-pod.yaml
kind: Pod
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: nginx
  labels:
    name: nginx
spec:
  containers:
  - name: nginx
    image: nginx
    ports:
    - containerPort: 80
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f ./my-pod.yaml --namespace=production

Alternatively, we could have specified the namespace in the YAML file:

kind: Pod
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: nginx
  labels:
    name: nginx
  namespace: production
spec:
  containers:
  - name: nginx
    image: nginx
    ports:
    - containerPort: 80
  • Try using the following command to view your Pod:
$ kubectl get pods
No resources found.

You will not see your Pod because kubectl checked the default namespace (by default) instead of our new namespace.

  • Run the command again, but this time specify the new namespace:
$ kubectl get pods --namespace=production
NAME    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
nginx   1/1     Running   0          54s

Now you should see your newly created Pod.

About Roles and RoleBindings

In this section, we will create a sample custom role, and then create a RoleBinding that grants Username 2 the editor role in the production namespace.

  • Defines a role called pod-reader that provides create, get, list, and watch permission for Pod objects in the production namespace. Note that this role cannot delete Pods:
$ cat << EOF > pod-reader-role.yaml
kind: Role
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  namespace: production
  name: pod-reader
rules:
- apiGroups: [""]
  resources: ["pods"]
  verbs: ["create", "get", "list", "watch"]
Create a custom Role

Before you can create a Role, your account must have the permissions granted in the role being assigned. For cluster administrators, this can be easily accomplished by creating the following RoleBinding to grant your own user account the cluster-admin role.

To grant the Username 1 account cluster-admin privileges, run the following command, replacing [USERNAME_1_EMAIL] with the email address of the Username 1 account:

$ kubectl create clusterrolebinding cluster-admin-binding --clusterrole cluster-admin --user [USERNAME_1_EMAIL]

Now, create the role (defined above):

$ kubectl apply -f pod-reader-role.yaml

$ kubectl get roles --namespace production
NAME         AGE
pod-reader   8s
Create a RoleBinding

The role is used to assign privileges, but by itself it does nothing. The role must be bound to a user and an object, which is done in the RoleBinding.

  • Creates a RoleBinding called username2-editor for the second lab user to the pod-reader role we created earlier. That role can create and view Pods but cannot delete them:
$ cat << EOF > username2-editor-binding.yaml
kind: RoleBinding
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: username2-editor
  namespace: production
subjects:
- kind: User
  name: [USERNAME_2_EMAIL]
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
roleRef:
  kind: Role
  name: pod-reader
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
EOF

This file contains a placeholder, [USERNAME_2_EMAIL], that we must replace with the email address of Username 2 before we apply it.

  • Use sed to replace the placeholder in the file with the value of the environment variable:
sed -i "s/\[USERNAME_2_EMAIL\]/${USER2}/" username2-editor-binding.yaml
  • Confirm that the correct change has been made:
$ cat username2-editor-binding.yaml
subjects:
- kind: User
  name: gcpstaginguser68_student@qwiklabs.net
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io

We will apply this RoleBinding later.

Test Access

Now we will test whether Username 2 can create a Pod in the production namespace by using Username 2 to create a Pod. This manifest deploys a simple Pod with a single Nginx container:

$ cat << EOF > production-pod.yaml
kind: Pod
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: production-pod
  labels:
    name: production-pod
  namespace: production
spec:
  containers:
  - name: production-pod
    image: nginx
    ports:
    - containerPort: 8080
EOF

Switch back to the Username 2 GCP Console tab. Make sure you are on the Username 2 GCP Console tab.

In Cloud Shell for Username 2, type the following command to set the environment variable for the zone and cluster name.

$ export my_zone=us-central1-a
$ export my_cluster=standard-cluster-1
$ source <(kubectl completion bash)
$ gcloud container clusters get-credentials $my_cluster --zone $my_zone

Check if Username 2 can see the production namespace:

$ kubectl get namespaces
NAME          STATUS   AGE
default       Active   11m
kube-public   Active   11m
kube-system   Active   11m
production    Active   9m8s

The production namespace appears at the bottom of the list, so we can continue.

  • Create the resource in the namespace called production:
$ kubectl apply -f ./production-pod.yaml
Error from server (Forbidden): error when creating "./production-pod.yaml": pods is forbidden: User "student-c2126354c28c@qwiklabs.net" cannot create resource "pods" in API group "" in the namespace "production"

The above command fails, indicating that Username 2 does not have the correct permission to create Pods. Username 2 only has the viewer permissions it started the lab with at this point because you have not bound any other role to that account yet. You will now change that.

Switch back to the Username 1 GCP Console tab. Make sure you are on the Username 1 GCP Console tab.

In the Cloud Shell for Username 1, execute the following command to create the RoleBinding that grants Username 2 the pod-reader role that includes the permission to create Pods in the production namespace:

$ kubectl apply -f username2-editor-binding.yaml

In the Cloud Shell for Username 1, execute the following command to look for the new role binding:

$ kubectl get rolebinding
No resources found.

The rolebinding does not appear because kubectl is showing the default namespace.

In the Cloud Shell for Username 1, execute the following command with the production namespace specified:

$ kubectl get rolebinding --namespace production
NAME               AGE
username2-editor   49s

Switch back to the Username 2 GCP Console tab. Make sure you are on the Username 2 GCP Console tab.

In the Cloud Shell for Username 2, execute the following command to create the resource in the namespace called production:

$ kubectl apply -f ./production-pod.yaml
pod/production-pod created

This should now succeed as Username 2 now has the Create permission for Pods in the production namespace.

  • Verify the Pod deployed properly in the production namespace:
$ kubectl get pods --namespace production
NAME             READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
nginx            1/1     Running   0          11m
production-pod   1/1     Running   0          26s

Verify that only the specific RBAC permissions granted by the pod-reader role are in effect for Username 2 by attempting to delete the production-pod:

$ kubectl delete pod production-pod --namespace production
Error from server (Forbidden): pods "production-pod" is forbidden: User "student-c2126354c28c@qwiklabs.net" cannot delete resource "pods" in API group "" in the namespace "production"

This fails because Username 2 does not have the delete permission for Pods.

Pod security policies

Creating a Pod Security Policy

In this section, we will create a Pod Security Policy. This policy does not allow privileged Pods and restricts runAsUser to non-root accounts only, preventing the user of the Pod from escalating to root:

$ cat << EOF > restricted-psp.yaml
kind: PodSecurityPolicy
apiVersion: policy/v1beta1
metadata:
  name: restricted-psp
spec:
  privileged: false  # Don't allow privileged pods!
  seLinux:
    rule: RunAsAny
  supplementalGroups:
    rule: RunAsAny
  runAsUser:
    rule: MustRunAsNonRoot
  fsGroup:
    rule: RunAsAny
  volumes:
  - '*'
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f restricted-psp.yaml

$ kubectl get podsecuritypolicy restricted-psp
NAME             PRIV    CAPS   SELINUX    RUNASUSER          FSGROUP    SUPGROUP   READONLYROOTFS   VOLUMES
restricted-psp   false          RunAsAny   MustRunAsNonRoot   RunAsAny   RunAsAny   false            *

NOTE: This policy has no effect until a cluster role is created and bound to a user or service account with the permission to "use" the policy.

Create a ClusterRole to a Pod Security Policy
  • Create a ClusterRole that includes the resource we created in the last section (restricted-psp), and grant the subject the ability to use the restricted-psp resource. The subject is the user or service account that is bound to this role. We will bind an account to this role later to enable the use of the policy:
$ cat << EOF > psp-cluster-role.yaml
kind: ClusterRole
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: restricted-pods-role
rules:
- apiGroups:
  - extensions
  resources:
  - podsecuritypolicies
  resourceNames:
  - restricted-psp
  verbs:
  - use
EOF

However, before we can create a Role, the account we use to create the role must already have the permissions granted in the role being assigned. For cluster administrators, this can be easily accomplished by creating the necessary RoleBinding to grant your own user account the cluster-admin role.

  • To grant your user account cluster-admin privileges, run the following command, replacing [USERNAME_1_EMAIL] with the email address of the Username 1 account:
$ kubectl create clusterrolebinding cluster-admin-binding --clusterrole cluster-admin --user [USERNAME_1_EMAIL]
  • Create the ClusterRole with access to the security policy:
$ kubectl apply -f psp-cluster-role.yaml

$ kubectl get clusterrole restricted-pods-role
NAME                   AGE
restricted-pods-role   7s

The ClusterRole is ready, but it is not yet bound to a subject, and therefore is not yet active.

Create a ClusterRoleBinding for the Pod Security Policy

The next step in the process involves binding the ClusterRole to a subject, a user or service account, that would be responsible for creating Pods in the target namespace. Typically these policies are assigned to service accounts because Pods are typically deployed by replicationControllers in Deployments rather than as one-off executions by a human user.

  • Bind the restricted-pods-role (created in the last section) to the system:serviceaccounts group in the default Namespace:
$ cat << EOF > psp-cluster-role-binding.yaml
kind: RoleBinding
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
metadata:
  name: restricted-pod-rolebinding
  namespace: default
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: restricted-pods-role
subjects:
# Example: All service accounts in default namespace
- apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: Group
  name: system:serviceaccounts
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f psp-cluster-role-binding.yaml
Activate Security Policy

The PodSecurityPolicy controller must be enabled to affect the admission control of new Pods in the cluster.

Caution! If you do not define and authorize policies prior to enabling the PodSecurityPolicy controller, no Pods will be permitted to execute on the cluster.

  • Enable the PodSecurityPolicy controller:
$ gcloud beta container clusters update $my_cluster --zone $my_zone --enable-pod-security-policy

This process takes several minutes to complete.

Note: The PodSecurityPolicy controller, can be disabled by running this command:

$ gcloud beta container clusters update [CLUSTER_NAME] --no-enable-pod-security-policy
Test the Pod Security Policy

The final step in the process involves testing to see if the Policy is active. This Pod attempts to start an nginx container in a privileged context:

$ cat << EOF > privileged-pod.yaml
kind: Pod
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: privileged-pod
spec:
  containers:
    - name: privileged-pod
      image: nginx
      securityContext:
        privileged: true
EOF

$ kubectl apply -f privileged-pod.yaml

Error from server (Forbidden): error when creating "privileged-pod.yaml": pods "privileged-pod-1" is forbidden: unable to validate against any pod security policy: [spec.containers[0].securityContext.privileged: Invalid value: true: Privileged containers are not allowed]

You should not be able to deploy the privileged Pod.

Edit the privileged-pod.yaml manifest and remove the two lines at the bottom that invoke the privileged container security context. The file should now look as follows:

kind: Pod
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: privileged-pod
spec:
  containers:
    - name: privileged-pod
      image: nginx
  • Re-deploy the privileged Pod:
$ kubectl apply -f privileged-pod.yaml

The command now succeeds because the container no longer requires a privileged security context.

Rotate IP Address and Credentials

In this section, we will perform IP and credential rotation on our cluster. It is a security best practice to do so regularly to reduce credential lifetimes. While there are separate commands to rotate the serving IP and credentials, rotating credentials additionally rotates the IP as well.

  • Update the GKE cluster to start the credential rotation process:
$ gcloud container clusters update $my_cluster --zone $my_zone --start-credential-rotation

After the command completes, the cluster will initiate the process to update each of the nodes. That process can take up to 15 minutes for your cluster. The process also automatically updates the kubeconfig entry for the current user.

The cluster master now temporarily serves the new IP address in addition to the original address.

Note: You must update the kubeconfig file on any other system that uses kubectl or API to access the master before completing rotation process to avoid losing access.

  • Complete the credential and IP rotation process:
$ gcloud container clusters update $my_cluster --zone $my_zone --complete-credential-rotation

This finalizes the rotation processes and removes the original cluster IP address.

Stackdriver

Metrics vs. Events
  • Metrics: Represent system performance (e.g., CPU or disk usage). These can be values that change up or down over time called gauge values or values that increase over time called counters.
    Returns numerical values
  • Events: Represent actions, such as Pod restarts or scale-in/scale-out activity.
    Returns "success", "warning", or "failure".

Logging

Logging is often viewed as a passive form of systems monitoring.

Stackdriver stores logs for 30 days (default) and up to 50GB is free.

After 30 days, Stackdriver purges your logs. If you wish to keep these logs, export them to BigQuery or Cloud Storage for long-term storage (longer than 30 days).

Node log files (stored in /var/log on each node) that are older than 1 day or that reach 100 Mb will be compressed and rotated (using standard Linux log rotate). Only the 5 most recent log files are kept on the node. However, all logs are streamed to Stackdriver (in JSON format) for stored for 30 days.

GKE installs a logging agent on every node in a cluster. This streams the logs of every container/pod into Stackdriver, using FluentD (running as a DaemonSet). The configuration of FluentD is managed via ConfigMaps.

Monitoring

In GKE, monitoring is divided into 2 domains:

  1. Cluster-level:
    • Master nodes (api-server, etcd, scheduler, controller-manager, cloud-controller-manager)
    • Worker nodes
    • Number of nodes, node utilization, pods/deployments running, errors and failures.
  2. Pods:
    • container metrics
    • application metrics
    • system metrics

Probes

The best practice is to apply additional health checks to your (microservices) Pods:

  • Liveness probes:
    • Is the container running?
    • If not, restart the container (if RestartPolicy is set to Always or OnFailure)
  • Readiness probes:
    • Is the container ready to accept requests?
    • If not, remove the Pod's IP address from all Service endpoints (by the endpoint controller)

These probes can be defined using three types of handlers:

  1. command;
  2. HTTP; and
  3. TCP
  • Example of a command probe handler:
kind: Pod
apiVersion: v1
metadata:
  name: demo-pod
  namespace: default
spec:
  containers:
  - name: liveness
    livenessProbe:
      exec:
        command:
        - cat
        - /tmp/ready

If cat /tmp/ready returns an exit code of 0, the liveness probe reports that the container is successful.

  • Example of an HTTP probe handler:
[...]
spec:
  containers:
  - name: liveness
    livenessProbe:
      httpGet:
        path: /healthz
        port: 8080

If returns 200-400 => good, otherwise it will kill the container.

  • Example of a TCP probe handler:
[...]
spec:
  containers:
  - name: liveness
    livenessProbe:
      tcpSocket:
        port: 8080
      # optional:
      initialDelaySeconds: 15
      periodSeconds: 10
      timeoutSeconds: 1
      successThreshold: 1
      failureThreshold: 3

If the connection is established, the container is considered healthy.

Using Prometheus monitoring with Stackdriver

Set up Prometheus monitoring with GKE and Stackdriver

When you configure Stackdriver Kubernetes Monitoring with Prometheus support, then services that expose metrics in the Prometheus data model can be exported from the cluster and made visible as external metrics in Stackdriver.

In this task, you create the Prometheus service-account and a cluster role called prometheus and then use those when you deploy the container for the Prometheus service to provide the permissions that Prometheus requires.

The file rbac-setup.yml that is included in the source repository is a Kubernetes manifest file that creates the Kubernetes service account and cluster role for you.

In the Cloud Shell, execute the following command to set up the Kubernetes service account and cluster role ( both are named "prometheus") for the collector:

$ git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatformTraining/training-data-analyst
$ cd ~/training-data-analyst/courses/ak8s/16_Logging/
$ kubectl apply -f rbac-setup.yml --as=admin --as-group=system:masters

A basic Prometheus configuration file called prometheus-service.yml has also been provided for you. This creates a Kubernetes Namespace called Stackdriver, a Deployment that creates a single replica of the Stackdriver Prometheus container, and a ConfigMap that defines the configuration of the Prometheus collector. You modify values in the ConfigMap section of prometheus-service.yml so that it will monitor the GKE cluster you created for this lab.

  • Replace the placeholder variable in the prometheus-service.yml file with your current project ID:
sed -i 's/prometheus-to-sd/'"${GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT}"'/g'\
   prometheus-service.yml
  • Replace the placeholder variable in the prometheus-service.yml file with your current cluster name:
sed -i 's/prom-test-cluster-2/'"${my_cluster}"'/g'\
   prometheus-service.yml
  • Replace the placeholder variable in the prometheus-service.yml file with the GCP zone for the cluster:
sed -i 's/us-central1-a/'"${my_zone}"'/g' prometheus-service.yml
  • Start the prometheus server using your modified configuration:
$ kubectl apply -f prometheus-service.yml

After configuring Prometheus, run the following command to validate the installation:

$ kubectl get deployment,service -n stackdriver
NAME                               DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.extensions/prometheus   1         1         1            1           8s

NAME                 TYPE        CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)    AGE
service/prometheus   ClusterIP   10.12.2.179   <none>        9090/TCP   8s

Using Liveness and Readiness probes for GKE Pods

In this section, we will deploy a liveness probe to detect applications that have transitioned from a running state to a broken state. Sometimes, applications are temporarily unable to serve traffic. For example, an application might need to load large data or configuration files during startup. In such cases, you do not want to kill the application, but you do not want to send it requests either. Kubernetes provides readiness probes to detect and mitigate these situations. A Pod with containers reporting that they are not ready does not receive traffic through Kubernetes Services.

Readiness probes are configured similarly to liveness probes. The only difference is that you use the readinessProbe field instead of the livenessProbe field.

  • Define and deploy a simple container called liveness running Busybox and a liveness probe that uses the cat command against the file /tmp/healthy within the container to test for liveness every 5 seconds. The startup script for the liveness container creates the /tmp/healthy on startup and then deletes it 30 seconds later to simulate an outage that the Liveness probe can detect:
$ cat << EOF > exec-liveness.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  labels:
    test: liveness
  name: liveness-exec
spec:
  containers:
  - name: liveness
    image: k8s.gcr.io/busybox
    args:
    - /bin/sh
    - -c
    - touch /tmp/healthy; sleep 30; rm -rf /tmp/healthy; sleep 600
    livenessProbe:
      exec:
        command:
        - cat
        - /tmp/healthy
      initialDelaySeconds: 5
      periodSeconds: 5
EOF

$ kubectl create -f exec-liveness.yaml
  • Within 30 seconds, view the Pod events:
$ kubectl describe pod liveness-exec

    Type:        Secret (a volume populated by a Secret)
    SecretName:  default-token-wq52t
    Optional:    false
QoS Class:       Burstable
Node-Selectors:  <none>
Tolerations:     node.kubernetes.io/not-ready:NoExecute for 300s
                 node.kubernetes.io/unreachable:NoExecute for 300s

Events:
  Type     Reason        Age ... Message
  ----     ------       ---- ... -------
  Normal   Scheduled     11s ... Successfully assigned liveness-e ...
  Normal   Su...ntVolume 10s ... MountVolume.SetUp succeeded for  ...
  Normal   Pulling       10s ... pulling image "k8s.gcr.io/busybox"
  Normal   Pulled         9s ... Successfully pulled image "k8s.g ...
  Normal   Created        9s ... Created container
  Normal   Started        9s ... Started container

The output indicates that no liveness probes have failed yet.

After 35 seconds, view the Pod events again:

$ kubectl describe pod liveness-exec

At the bottom of the output, there are messages indicating that the liveness probes have failed, and the containers have been killed and recreated:

Liveness probe failed: cat: can't open '/tmp/healthy': No such file or directory
...
Killing container with id docker://liveness:Container failed liveness probe.. Container will be killed and recreated.
$ kubectl get pod liveness-exec
NAME            READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
liveness-exec   1/1     Running   2          2m15s

Use Stackdriver Logging with GKE

In this section, we will deploy a GKE cluster and demo application using Terraform that creates sample Stackdriver logging events. You view the logs for GKE resources in Logging and then create and monitor a custom monitoring metric created using a Stackdriver log filter.


Download Sample Logging Tool

We will download a Terraform configuration that creates a GKE cluster and then deploy a sample web application to that cluster to generate Logging events.

  • Setup:
$ mkdir ~/terraform-demo
$ cd ~/terraform-demo
$ git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatformTraining/gke-logging-sinks-demo
$ cd ~/terraform-demo/gke-logging-sinks-demo/
Deploy The Sample Logging Tool

We will now deploy the GKE Stackdriver Logging demo using Terraform.

  • Set your zone and region:
$ gcloud config set compute/region us-central1
$ gcloud config set compute/zone us-central1-a

( Instruct Terraform to run the sample logging tool:

$ make create

This process takes 2-3 minutes to complete. When complete you will see the message:

Apply complete! Resources: 8 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed.

Using Cloud SQL with Kubernetes Engine

CloudSQL Proxy is set up as a sidecar container running alongside your app container in your Pod.

Overview

In this section, we will set up a Kubernetes Deployment of WordPress connected to Cloud SQL via the SQL Proxy. The SQL Proxy lets you interact with a Cloud SQL instance as if it were installed locally (localhost:3306), and even though you are on an unsecured port locally, the SQL Proxy makes sure you are secure over the wire to your Cloud SQL Instance.

To complete this section, we will create several components:

  • Create a GKE cluster;
  • Create a Cloud SQL Instance to connect to, and a Service Account to provide permission for our Pods to access the Cloud SQL Instance; and, finally
  • Deploy WordPress on your GKE cluster, with the SQL Proxy as a Sidecar, connected to our Cloud SQL Instance.

Objectives

In this section, we will perform the following tasks:

  • Create a Cloud SQL instance and database for Wordpress
  • Create credentials and Kubernetes Secrets for application authentication
  • Configure a Deployment with a Wordpress image to use SQL Proxy
  • Install SQL Proxy as a sidecar container and use it to provide SSL access to a CloudSQL instance external to the GKE Cluster
Create a GKE cluster
  • Setup:
$ export my_zone=us-central1-a
$ export my_cluster=standard-cluster-1
$ source <(kubectl completion bash)
  • Create a VPC-native Kubernetes cluster:
$ gcloud container clusters create $my_cluster \
  --num-nodes 3 --enable-ip-alias --zone $my_zone
  • Configure access to the cluster for kubectl:
$ gcloud container clusters get-credentials $my_cluster --zone $my_zone
  • Get the repository:
$ git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatformTraining/training-data-analyst
$ cd ~/training-data-analyst/courses/ak8s/18_Cloud_SQL/
Create a Cloud SQL Instance
  • Create the SQL instance:
$ gcloud sql instances create sql-instance --tier=db-n1-standard-2 --region=us-central1
  • In the GCP Console, navigate to SQL.
  • You should see sql-instance listed, click on the name, and then click on the Users tab.
    You will have to wait a few minutes for the Cloud SQL instance to be provisioned. When you see the existing mysql.sys and root users listed you can proceed to the next step.
  • Click Create User Account and create an account, using sqluser as the username and sqlpassword as the password.
  • Leave the Hostname option set to Allow any host (%). and click Create.
  • Go back to Overview tab, still in your instance (sql-instance), and copy your Instance connection name.
    You will probably need to scroll down a bit to see it.

Create an environment variable to hold your Cloud SQL instance name, substituting the placeholder with the name you copied in the previous step.

export SQL_NAME=[Cloud SQL Instance Name]

Your command should look similar to the following:

export SQL_NAME=xtof-gcp-gcpd-e506927dfe49:us-central1:sql-instance
  • Connect to your Cloud SQL instance.
$ gcloud sql connect sql-instance

When prompted to enter the root password press enter. The root SQL user password is blank by default. The MySQL [(none)]> prompt appears, indicating that you are now connected to the Cloud SQL instance using the MySQL client.

  • Create the database required for Wordpress (this is called wordpress by default):
MySQL [(none)]> create database wordpress;
MySQL [(none)]> use wordpress;
MySQL [wordpress]> show tables; # <- This will report Empty set as you have not created any tables yet.
MySQL [wordpress]> exit;
Prepare a Service Account with Permission to Access Cloud SQL
  • To create a Service Account, in the GCP Console navigate to IAM & admin > Service accounts.
  • Click + Create Service Account.
  • Specify a Service account name called sql-access then click Create.
  • Click Select a role.
  • Search for Cloud SQL, select Cloud SQL Client and click Continue.
  • Click +Create Key, and make sure JSON key type is selected and click Create.
    This will create a public/private key pair, and download the private key file automatically to your computer. You will need this JSON file later.
  • Click Close to close the notification dialogue.
  • Locate the JSON credential file you downloaded and rename it to credentials.json.
  • Click Done.
Create Secrets

We will create two Kubernetes Secrets: one to provide the MySQL credentials and one to provide the Google credentials (the service account).

  • Create a Secret for your MySQL credentials:
$ kubectl create secret generic sql-credentials \
  --from-literal=username=sqluser\
  --from-literal=password=sqlpassword

If you used a different username and password when creating the Cloud SQL user accounts substitute those here.

  • Create a Secret for your GCP Service Account credentials:
$ kubectl create secret generic google-credentials\
  --from-file=key.json=credentials.json

Note that the file is uploaded to the Secret using the name key.json. That is the file name that a container will see when this Secret is attached as a Secret Volume.

Deploy the SQL Proxy agent as a sidecar container

A sample deployment manifest file called sql-proxy.yaml has been provided for you that deploys a demo Wordpress application container with the SQL Proxy agent as a sidecar container.

In the Wordpress container environment settings the WORDPRESS_DB_HOST is specified using the localhost IP address. The cloudsql-proxy sidecar container is configured to point to the Cloud SQL instance you created in the previous task. The database username and password are passed to the Wordpress container as secret keys, and the JSON credentials file is passed to the container using a Secret volume. A Service is also created to allow you to connect to the Wordpress instance from the internet.

kind: Deployment
apiVersion: apps/v1
metadata:
  name: wordpress
  labels:
    app: wordpress
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: wordpress
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: wordpress
    spec:
      containers:
        - name: web
          image: gcr.io/cloud-marketplace/google/wordpress
          ports:
            - containerPort: 80
          env:
            - name: WORDPRESS_DB_HOST
              value: 127.0.0.1:3306
            # These secrets are required to start the pod.
            # [START cloudsql_secrets]
            - name: WORDPRESS_DB_USER
              valueFrom:
                secretKeyRef:
                  name: sql-credentials
                  key: username
            - name: WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD
              valueFrom:
                secretKeyRef:
                  name: sql-credentials
                  key: password
            # [END cloudsql_secrets]
        # Change <INSTANCE_CONNECTION_NAME> here to include your GCP
        # project, the region of your Cloud SQL instance and the name
        # of your Cloud SQL instance. The format is
        # $PROJECT:$REGION:$INSTANCE
        # [START proxy_container]
        - name: cloudsql-proxy
          image: gcr.io/cloudsql-docker/gce-proxy:1.11
          command: ["/cloud_sql_proxy",
                    "-instances=<INSTANCE_CONNECTION_NAME>=tcp:3306",
                    "-credential_file=/secrets/cloudsql/key.json"]
          # [START cloudsql_security_context]
          securityContext:
            runAsUser: 2  # non-root user
            allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
          # [END cloudsql_security_context]
          volumeMounts:
            - name: cloudsql-instance-credentials
              mountPath: /secrets/cloudsql
              readOnly: true
        # [END proxy_container]
      # [START volumes]
      volumes:
        - name: cloudsql-instance-credentials
          secret:
            secretName: google-credentials
      # [END volumes]
---
apiVersion: "v1"
kind: "Service"
metadata:
  name: "wordpress-service"
  namespace: "default"
  labels:
    app: "wordpress"
spec:
  ports:
  - protocol: "TCP"
    port: 80
  selector:
    app: "wordpress"
  type: "LoadBalancer"
  loadBalancerIP: ""

The important sections to note in this manifest are:

  • In the Wordpress env section, the variable WORDPRESS_DB_HOST is set to 127.0.0.1:3306. This will connect to a container in the same Pod listening on port 3306. This is the port that the SQL-Proxy listens on by default.
  • In the Wordpress env section, the variables WORDPRESS_DB_USER and WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD are set using values stored in the sql-credential Secret we created in the last section.
  • In the cloudsql-proxy container section, the command switch that defines the SQL Connection name, "-instances=<INSTANCE_CONNECTION_NAME>=tcp:3306", contains a placeholder variable that is not configured using a ConfigMap or Secret and so must be updated directly in this example manifest to point to your Cloud SQL instance.
  • In the cloudsql-proxy container section, the JSON credential file is mounted using the Secret volume in the directory /secrets/cloudsql/. The command switch "-credential_file=/secrets/cloudsql/key.json" points to the filename in that directory that we specified when creating the google-credentials Secret.
  • The Service section at the end creates an external LoadBalancer called "wordpress-service" that allows the application to be accessed from external internet addresses.

Use sed to update the placeholder variable for the SQL Connection name to the instance name of your Cloud SQL instance.

sed -i 's/<INSTANCE_CONNECTION_NAME>/'"${SQL_NAME}"'/g'\
   sql-proxy.yaml
  • Deploy the application:
$ kubectl apply -f sql-proxy.yaml

$ kubectl get deployment wordpress
NAME        DESIRED   CURRENT   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
wordpress   1         1         1            1           30s

Repeat the above command until you that one instance is available.

  • List the services in your GKE cluster:
$ kubectl get services
NAME                TYPE           CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)        AGE
kubernetes          ClusterIP      10.12.0.1     <none>        443/TCP        20m
wordpress-service   LoadBalancer   10.12.7.147   <pending>     80:30239/TCP   55s

The external LoadBalancer IP address for the wordpress-service is the address you use to connect to your Wordpress blog. Repeat the command until you get an external address.

Connect to your Wordpress instance
  • Open a new browser tab and connect to your Wordpress site using the external LoadBalancer IP address. This will start the initial Wordpress installation wizard.
  • Select English (United States) and click Continue.
  • Enter a sample name for the Site Title.
  • Enter a Username and Password to administer the site.
  • Enter an email address.

None of these values are particularly important, you will not need to use them.

  • Click Install Wordpress.

After a few seconds you will see the Success! Notification. You can log in if you wish to explore the Wordpress admin interface but it is not required for the lab.

The initialization process has created new database tables and data in the wordpress database on your Cloud SQL instance. You will now validate that these new database tables have been created using the SQL proxy container.

  • Connect to your Cloud SQL instance:
$ gcloud sql connect sql-instance

When prompted to enter the root password press enter. The root SQL user password is blank by default. The MySQL [(none)]> prompt appears indicating that you are now connected to the Cloud SQL instance using the MySQL client.

MySQL [(none)]> use wordpress;
MySQL [wordpress]> show tables;

This will now show a number of new database tables that were created when Wordpress was initialized demonstrating that the sidecar SQL Proxy container was configured correctly.

MySQL [wordpress]> show tables;
+-----------------------+
| Tables_in_wordpress   |
+-----------------------+
| wp_commentmeta        |
| wp_comments           |
| wp_links              |
| wp_options            |
| wp_postmeta           |
| wp_posts              |
| wp_term_relationships |
| wp_term_taxonomy      |
| wp_termmeta           |
| wp_terms              |
| wp_usermeta           |
| wp_users              |
+-----------------------+
12 rows in set (0.04 sec)
  • List all of the Wordpress user table entries:
MySQL [wordpress]> select * from wp_users;

This will list the database record for the Wordpress admin account showing the email you chose when initializing Wordpress.

  • Exit the MySQL client:
MySQL [wordpress]> exit;

External links