DevOps Kubernetes Toolkit

Project Overview

This project demonstrates a comprehensive DevOps workflow, showcasing provisioning, configuring, and deploying a fully-featured Kubernetes cluster both on-premise and in the cloud. Utilizing Infrastructure as Code (IaC), popular DevOps tools, GitOps principles, and industry best practices, this project serves as a robust reference implementation for building a production-ready Kubernetes environment.

Tools and Technologies

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
  • On-premise
    • vSphere
    • Kind for development and testing
  • Cloud (Coming Soon)
    • AWS
    • Azure
    • GCP
• Configuration Management with Ansible
• GitOps with Flux CD
• Backup and Disaster-Recovery with Velero
• Persistent Storage with a NFS Provisioner (Coming Soon)
• Security
  • RBAC (Coming Soon)
  • Network policies (Coming Soon)
  • mTLS - Encryption in transit (Coming Soon)
  • Secrets management with HashiCorp Vault
  • Third-party KMS integration with AWS KMS (Coming Soon)
  • Securing etcd (Coming Soon)
  • Security Policies with Kyverno (Coming Soon)
• Monitoring (Coming Soon)
  • Prometheus
  • Grafana
  • Loki

Objectives

• Provide a hands-on, practical guide to setting up Kubernetes clusters.
• Demonstrate the use of IaC for efficient and reproducible infrastructure setup.
• Highlight best practices in DevOps, GitOps, and Kubernetes management.

Getting Started

Embark on building your Kubernetes cluster using the tools and methodologies illustrated in this project. Follow the step-by-step guides to create an environment where you can deploy applications via GitOps, managing both infrastructure and applications seamlessly.

Prerequisites

• Familiarity with Kubernetes concepts.
• Basic understanding of Docker, Terraform, Ansible, and GitOps.
• Access to on-premise hardware or cloud infrastructure as required.

Quickstart with Kind

For development and testing, leverage Kind for a quick and efficient setup.

Kind: A tool for running local Kubernetes clusters using Docker containers. Ideal for development, testing, and CI workflows.

• Advantages: Quick setup, designed for Kubernetes testing.
• Guide: kind.md

Building on vSphere (On-premise)

For a more robust and production-like environment, consider building your cluster on-premise using vSphere.

Steps:

1. Packer: Customize Alma Linux 8 with RKE2 pre-installed.
   • Guide: packer.md
2. Terraform: Provision and manage the infrastructure.
   • Guide: terraform.md
3. Ansible: Configure the provisioned infrastructure and deploy Kubernetes.
   • Guide: ansible.md

Cloud Deployment (Coming Soon)

Documentation and guides for deploying to popular cloud providers will be available in future updates.

Deploying your Infrastructure and Applications using GitOps

Once your cluster is up and running, you can deploy applications using GitOps principles. Flux CD is a popular GitOps tool that allows you to manage your Kubernetes cluster and applications using Git repositories.

In the flux.md guide, you will learn how to deploy Flux CD to your cluster and configure it to deploy applications from a Git repository.

In the vault.md guide, you will learn how to deploy HashiCorp Vault to your cluster and configure it to store secrets for your applications. This is the recommended approach for storing secrets in your cluster.

In the sealed-secrets.md guide, you will learn how to deploy Sealed Secrets to your cluster and configure it to encrypt and decrypt secrets for your applications. If you do not wish to deploy HashiCorp Vault, this is an alternative approach for storing secrets in your cluster. However, this approach is not recommended for production environments.

In the velero.md guide, you will learn how to deploy Velero to your cluster and configure it to backup and restore your cluster resources.

In the config-syncer.md guide, you will learn how to deploy Config Syncer to your cluster and configure it to synchronize your cluster resources across namespaces.