guillermo-ampie/techtrends

This project showcases the use of several CI/CD tools and cloud services used to automate the deployment of a sample Flask application (provided) into a Kubernetes cluster

Techtrends

Project Overview

This project showcases the use of several CI/CD tools and Cloud services employed to automate the deployment of a sample Flask application (provided) into a Kubernetes cluster.

Introduction

This project operationalizes a sample Flask application TechTrends deployed into a Kubernetes(K8S) cluster built with K3S.

The TechTrends applications is a monolithic app, that is containerized using Docker and deployed into a Kubernetes cluster. The K8S cluster is installed in a Vagrant Box (this virtual machine uses OpenSUSE).

CI/CD Approach

All the steps to build and deploy the application into the Kubernetes cluster are fully automated using a CI pipeline and CD tools.

Project Workflow

1. A pipeline deployed in GitHub Actions builds the container image and deploys it to DockerHub

2. Then, using ArgoCD the app is deployed into two namespaces in the Kubernetes cluster:

   • Helm is used to write the application configuration templates

CI/CD Tools and Cloud Services

• Docker - Platform as a service products that use OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers
• Docker Hub - Container images repository service
• Kubernetes - System for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications
• K3S - Lightweight Kubernetes distribution
• Vagrant - Tool for building and managing virtual machine environments
• GitHub Actions - Cloud-based CI/CD service
• ArgoCD - GitOps Continuous Delivery tool for Kubernetes
• Helm - Application package manager for Kubernetes

GitHub Actions Variables

Set up the following variables in the GitHub repo to configure the GitHub Actions pipeline:

• DOCKERHUB_USERNAME: the Docker Hub username
• DOCKERHUB_TOKEN: to authenticate into DockerHub

Main Files

• Several Makefiles are provides as a convenience for specific groups of tasks:

  • To manage the Vagrant Box: ./Makefile.vagrant

  • To setup/install the python environment for local development, test, and also Docker management: ./Makefile

  • To install all the dependencies in the Vagrant Box (OpenSUSE): ./suse_box/Makefile

  • To manually deploy all the Kubernetes resources in the Vagrant Box: ./kubernetes/Makefile

  • To deploy the application using ArgoCD: ./argocd/Makefile

• GitHub Actions configuration file: techtrends-dockerhub.yml

• ArgoCD application definition files: helm-techtrends-prod.yaml, helm-techtrends-staging.yaml

• Helm Chart and related files: Chart.yaml and helm files

• Kubernetes declarative files: kubernetes

• TechTrends application: techtrends

• Container definition file: Dockerfile

• Vagrant Box definition file: Vagrantfile