Res-Edge Labs

Introduction

Kubernetes is hard. Getting started and set up for the first time can take weeks to get right. Managing deployments on a fleet of Kubernetes clusters on the edge brings even more challenges.

Kubernetes in Codespaces (KiC) is a game-changer for the end-to-end Kubernetes development lifecycle from a local cluster to deployments on the edge. KiC reduces the initial friction and empowers the developer to get started and deployed to a dev/test environment within minutes. The pre-configured Codespaces environment includes a Kubernetes cluster and a custom CLI (kic) that help streamline the initial Kubernetes learning curve.

These labs walks through the rich end-to-end developer experience of KiC. The labs start by walking you through creating, building, testing, and deploying an application on a local cluster running inside Codespaces (inner-loop) with a complete CNCF observability stack (Grafana, Prometheus, and Fluent Bit).

Prerequisites

• GitHub Codespaces access
  • You should have this as a member of cse-labs/res-edge-labs
  • Ping bartr if you have access issues

GitHub Codespaces

Codespaces allows you to develop in a secure, configurable, and dedicated development environment in the cloud that works how and where you want it to

• GitHub Codespaces Overview
  • GitHub Codespaces is available to all GitHub users and organizations
  • For more information, see "GitHub's products"

We use GitHub Codespaces for our inner-loop and outer-loop Developer Experiences. While other DevX are available, currently, we only support GitHub Codespaces.

Best Practice: as you begin projects, ensure that you have Codespaces and Azure subscriptions with proper permissions

inner-loop

• inner-loop refers to the tasks that developers do every day as part of their development process
  • Generally, inner-loop happens on the individual developer workstation
    • For KiC, the inner-loop and developer workstation is Codespaces
    • When a developer creates a Codespace, that is their "personal development workstation in the cloud"
• As part of KiC, we have automated the creation of the developer workstation using a repeatable, consistent, Infrastructure as Code approach
  • We have an advanced workshop planned for customizing the Codespaces experience for your project
• With the power of Codespaces, a developer can create a consistent workstation with a few clicks in less than a minute

outer-loop

• outer-loop refers to the tasks that developers and DevOps do as they move from dev to test to pre-prod to production
  • Generally outer-loop happens on shared compute outside of the developer workstation
  • For KiC, outer-loop uses a combination of Codespaces and dev/test clusters in Azure
• As part of KiC, we have automated the creation of dev/test clusters using a repeatable, consistent, Infrastructure as Code approach

Create a Codespace

• Create a Codespace from the repo you created. You can use the same Codespace for any of the labs.

Note: make sure you create a codespace from the created repo, not the template repo.

• Click the <> Code button
  • Make sure the Codespaces tab is active
• Click Create Codespace on main
• After about 5 minutes, you will have a GitHub Codespace running with a complete Kubernetes Developer Experience!

Environment variables

Many of these labs use environment variables, using the export functionality. If you wish, you can edit the kic.env file to persist exported environment variables across terminal sessions. Just add the same "export FOO=BAR" lines to your kic.env file.

code ~/kic.env

# reload kic.env
source "$HOME/kic.env"

Getting Started

The first lab is an inner-loop lab that introduces Codespaces and the various pre-installed components and tools

The lab is the basis for all future labs, so you should go through the lab a few times until you're comfortable with Codespaces and the tools

• Create a K8s cluster in the Codespace
• Build, deploy, and test a new application
• Deploy a CNCF observability stack
  • Fluent Bit (log forwarding)
  • Prometheus (metrics)
  • Grafana (dashboards)
• Generate and observe synthetic load
• Run and observe load tests

Lab: Introduction to Kubernetes in Codespaces

Deploy Data Service

This lab is a prerequisite for future labs

Resilient Edge (Res-Edge) is a composition of tools designed to streamline application manageability across a highly distributed application platform. The objective is to leverage a small platform team to support a highly distributed ecosystem of clusters and apps. We will step through how Resilient Edge (Res-Edge) addresses the following capabilities:

• Managing Clusters at Scale
• Matching Applications and Clusters
• Configuration Proliferation
• Connectivity

Lab: Deploy Resilient Edge Data Service to Codespaces

Deploy Data Service and UI

• This is work in progress
  • run .devcontainer/deploy-res-edge.sh --force from the root of the repo
  • Click on the Ports tab
  • Open port 30080 in your browser
  • Login with any valid username and the password bar
    • Login will eventually be integraded with Active Directory

Assign a Group to a Namespace

This lab is a prerequisite for the Kustomize lab

• Res-Edge uses Groups to allow applying Kubernetes manifests to multiple Clusters at the same time
• In order for a Namespace and associated Application(s) to deploy to a Cluster, you must assign a Group(s) to the Namespace
• This lab will demonstrate:
  • Assigning the store Group to the imdb Namespace
  • Running cicd locally
  • Reviewing, committing, and pushing the changes to your GitHub repo

You can do this from the UI by updating the expression on the imdb Namespace to /g/stores

Lab: Assign a Group to a Namespace

Ring Deployment with Kustomize

Application teams often want to deploy new versions of their app(s) to a growing subset of clusters. Res-Edge uses Kustomize, Groups, Namespaces, and Applications to provide ring deployments. This lab demonstrates ring deployment using Res-Edge and Kustomize.

Lab: Ring deployment with Res-Edge and Kustomize

Register new Namespace and Applications

Application teams need to register new Namespaces and Applications in the Res-Edge Data Service in order to deploy their apps.

• In this lab, we will register a new Namespace and two new Applications to the Data Service

Lab: Register a new Namespace and Applications

Deploy via GitOps (Flux)

GitOps Lab

• In this lab, we will use GitOps (Flux) to deploy the Namespaces and Applications assigned to a Cluster

Lab: Deploy via GitOps

Support

This project uses GitHub Issues to track bugs and feature requests. Please search the existing issues before filing new issues to avoid duplicates. For new issues, file your bug or feature request as a new issue.

Contributing

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This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact [email protected] with any additional questions or comments.

Trademarks

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