Ben Coleman

Ben Coleman

Cloud Solution Architect.
Containers, Open source, Node.js, DevOps, automation

Introduction

This lab aims to introduce people to Kubernetes and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) by working through a practical example; that of deploying a working microservices application. During this lab you will deploy a Kubernetes cluster using AKS, configure your own container registry, deploy a number of microservices, configure their network access to combine the services into a working end to end application. Finally you look at how Kubernetes can be used to make the app resilient and scalable

The application we will be using is called ‘Smilr’ and is covered in much more detail in this demo guide. Smilr allows people to provide feedback on events or sessions they have attended via a simple web & mobile interface. The feedback consists of a rating (scored 1-5) and supporting comments. Administrators can create new events and schedule them

For the purpose of this lab we can ignore much of the low level detail & software architecture of the application, and treat it as a set of microservice containers to be deployed into Kubernetes.

Core Technologies

  • Kubernetes
  • Docker
  • Azure Container Service (AKS)
  • Azure Container Registry

💬 Note. The Smilr app makes use of many other open source technologies such as Angular, Node.JS, Express and MongoDB, however for this lab we will focus on Kubernetes so the internal workings of each software component will not be covered in any detail

Application Architecture

This is a simplified view of the Smilr application: Application Architecture Diagram

This is what we will be standing up and deploying piece by to Kubernetes over the course of this lab

Some important notes on the configuration of the Smilr app:

  • The frontend listens for HTTP traffic on port 3000 and is stateless
  • The frontend passes the API endpoint to the Angular client, this is set via an environmental variable called API_ENDPOINT
  • The frontend makes no connection to the data-api, it only serves the Angular client app. This is a common architectural pattern for Single Page Applications. This is different from traditional 3-tier applications you might be familiar with
  • The data-api listens for HTTP traffic on port 4000 and is stateless
  • The data-api connects to MongoDB using a connection string, this is set via an environmental variable called MONGO_CONNSTR
  • The MongoDB component is a standard MongoDB 3.4 server, with no authentication. This is obviously stateful

Assumptions & Scope

This lab does not require any prior Kubernetes skills or knowledge, however being familiar with some of the concepts and what Kubernetes does, would clearly be advantageous

📘 What is Kubernetes?

As Kubernetes is built on top of containers and Docker, and we’ll be using Azure, baseline level of knowledge is assumed in two main areas:

  • Standard use of Azure: - Azure CLI, Resource groups, subscriptions, etc.
  • Docker basics: - What are images & containers, tags, container registries etc. If you need to get up to speed quickly, you can try reading the Containers Tech Primer

Pre-Reqs

There are several things you will need before starting this lab:

  • Azure Subscription
    Either an existing Azure subscription you have access to (with ‘contributor’ rights) or Azure Pass or free account.
    We will deploy an Azure Container Service (AKS) cluster however this is not necessarily an expensive service, and could easily run for several weeks in the credit provided by an Azure Pass
    • Note On Permissions - If using an existing subscription you will need rights to create a service principal in the Azure AD tenant you use. This is a pre-req to deploying AKS.
    • If you activate an Azure Pass do not use your company/work email address

  • Option 1: Azure Cloud Shell
    This is the preferred and recommended approach for a number of reasons. The Azure Cloud Shell is an online browser based shell, accessed either from the Azure Portal or directly via https://shell.azure.com/bash. There is nothing you need to install, however if you have not used it before it will prompt you for a few set-up steps. We will be using the Bash version of the Cloud Shell, not PowerShell. You will need your Azure subscription setup before you can start.

  • Option 2: WSL Bash

The majority of this lab is command-line based, and you can use Linux Bash. One great option for running Bash is to use the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). If you have this already installed and working this would be the preferred option. For this lab you can go ahead and install WSL however be aware it takes some time to install & requires a reboot.

  • You will additionally need to install the Azure CLI v2.0

  • Note. Any WSL distro should work, however only Ubuntu has been tested.

  • Visual Studio Code
    We will not be writing real code but there will be significant editing of YAML files. You can use other text editors if you wish (but please not Notepad!). VS Code has good support for YAML and the Kubernetes extension can be extremely useful for working with Kubernetes

Lab Contents

As this lab is quite long, it has been split into several modules:

Module 1 - Deploying Kubernetes
Module 2 - Azure Container Registry (ACR)
Module 3 - Deploying the Data Layer
Module 4 - Services & Networking
Module 5 - Deploying the Frontend
Module 6 - Scaling & Persistence
Extra - Optional Exercises

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