README
¶
Release Manager
GitOps release manager for kubernetes configuration repositories.
This project is used as an internal project at Lunar Way and it therefore contains some assumptions on our setup. This includes environment naming (dev, staging, prod), and also a specific check for @lunarway domains. Further it is build around assumptions made by our OSS project shuttle, and id's for releases are a combination of branch name, git-sha from source repo, and git-sha from shuttle plan repo. Our initial intent is not to support this as an open source project.
We will however, have it public available for reference. This might change over time.
Design
The release-manager consist of 4 different "microservices" with each having a specific responsibility in the pipeline. The applications are basically utilities for moving files around a Git repository. The four applications are:
| Application | Description |
|---|---|
| artifact | a simple tool for generating an artifact.json blob with information from the CI pipeline |
| server | the API-server where clients (hamtcl) connects to, and daemon reports events to. It further implements different flows, e.g., promote a release, release an artifact |
| hamctl | a CLI client for interacting with the release-manager server |
| daemon | a daemon reporting events about cluster component status back to the release-manager server |
A simplified overview of all the components involved in the flow can be seen below:
The applications are not enough to complete the flow. We utilize jenkins as a CI server and Weaveworks Flux as a release operator running inside each cluster.
Components
Artifact
artifact is used to generate, what we refer to as artifacts. These are just a json-blob containing relevant information from the Continuous Integration flow.
As mentioned we use shuttle in our jenkins to minimize the custom "CI" code we have to write, making it portable, if we decide to change CI solution at some point. The id's of the artifacts, are composed of <Branch>-<Source Repository>-<Plan Repository>.
An example of a generated artifact.json
{
"id": "dev-0017d995e3-67e9d69164",
"application": {
"sha": "0017d995e32e3d1998395d971b969bcf682d2085",
"authorName": "First Last",
"authorEmail": "email@lunarway.com",
"committerName": "First Last",
"committerEmail": "email@lunarway.com",
"message": "reformat something",
"name": "lunar-way-example-service",
"url": "https://bitbucket.org/LunarWay/lunar-way-example-service/commits/0017d995e32e3d1998395d971b969bcf682d2085",
"provider": "BitBucket"
},
"ci": {
"jobUrl": "https://jenkins.example.lunarway.com/job/bitbucket/job/lunar-way-example-service/job/dev/84/display/redirect",
"start": "2019-03-29T13:47:15.259380775+01:00",
"end": "2019-03-29T13:49:57.686299407+01:00"
},
"shuttle": {
"plan": {
"message": "fixes-a-bug-where-database-names-would-not-be-valid-if-services-have-more-than-one-dash-in-their-name",
"url": "git://git@bitbucket.org:LunarWay/lw-shuttle-go-plan.git"
}
},
"stages": [
{
"id": "build",
"name": "Build",
"data": {
"dockerVersion": "18.09.3",
"image": "quay.io/lunarway/example",
"tag": "dev-0017d995e3-67e9d69164"
}
},
{
"id": "snyk-code",
"name": "Security Scan - Code",
"data": {
"url": "https://app.snyk.io/org/squad-example/project/ID/history/ID",
"vulnerabilities": {
"high": 0,
"low": 0,
"medium": 0
}
}
},
{
"id": "test",
"name": "Test",
"data": {
"results": {
"failed": 0,
"passed": 173,
"skipped": 0
},
"url": "https://jenkins.example.lunarway.com/job/bitbucket/job/lunar-way-example-service/job/dev/84/display/redirect"
}
},
{
"id": "push",
"name": "Push",
"data": {
"dockerVersion": "18.09.3",
"image": "quay.io/lunarway/example",
"tag": "dev-0017d995e3-67e9d69164"
}
}
]
}
Server
Promote
The promotion flows, is a convetion based release process. It can be invoked by hamctl as follows:
$ hamctl promote --service example --env dev
The convention follows the following flow: master -> dev -> staging -> prod
As seen in the example above, the example service will be promoted from the lastest available artifact from master to the dev environment.
Another example, is a promotion of an artifact running in, e.g. staging, to the production environment. This can be achieved with the following command:
$ hamctl promote --service example --env prod
The above locates what is running in the staging environment, and takes the necessary steps to run the same artifact in prod.
Release
The release flow, is a more liberal release process. There is no conventions in how artifacts move between environments. This makes it suitable for releasing hotfix-branches to production or feature-branches to a specific environment for testing before merging into master.
The release flow currently consist of two approaches, either the release of the lastest artifact from a given branch, or a specific artifact id.
Example of a release of a feature branch to the dev environment:
$ hamctl release --service example --branch "feature/new_feature" --env dev
Example of a release of a specific artifact id to the staging environment:
$ hamctl release --service example --artifact dev-0017d995e3-67e9d69164 --env staging
Status
Status is a convience flow to display currently released artifact to the three different environments; dev, staging,prod.
$ hamctl status --service example
dev:
Tag: master-1c1508405e-67e9d69164
Author: Kasper Nissen
Committer: Peter Petersen
Message: empty-commit-to-test-flow
Date: 2019-04-01 11:14:26 +0200 CEST
Link: https://jenkins.example.lunarway.com/job/bitbucket/job/lunar-way-example-service/job/master/132/display/redirect
Vulnerabilities: 0 high, 0 medium, 0 low
staging:
Tag: master-1c1508405e-67e9d69164
Author: Kasper Nissen
Committer: Peter Petersen
Message: empty-commit-to-test-flow
Date: 2019-04-01 11:14:26 +0200 CEST
Link: https://jenkins.example.lunarway.com/job/bitbucket/job/lunar-way-example-service/job/master/132/display/redirect
Vulnerabilities: 0 high, 0 medium, 0 low
prod:
Tag: master-8fgh08405e-67e9d69164
Author: John John
Committer: Hans Hansen
Message: some-commit
Date: 2019-04-01 11:14:26 +0200 CEST
Link: https://jenkins.example.lunarway.com/job/bitbucket/job/lunar-way-example-service/job/master/132/display/redirect
Vulnerabilities: 0 high, 0 medium, 0 low
Policies
It is possible to configure policies for releases with hamctl's policy command.
You can list, apply and delete policies for a specific service like below.
$ hamctl policy --service <service> list
$ hamctl policy --service <service> apply <policy>
$ hamctl policy --service <service> delete <policy-id> [<policy-id>]
See below for details on how to apply specific policies.
Auto-release artifacts from branches to environments
An auto-release policy instructs the release manager to deploy new artifacts from a specific branch into an environment.
Multiple policies can be applied for the same branch to different environments, e.g. release master artifacts to dev and staging.
This is an example of applying an auto-release policy for the product service for the master branch and dev environment.
$ hamctl policy --service example apply auto-release --branch master --env dev
Notifications
When releasing applications the server will notify different upstream services along with outputting an identifiable log useful for log aggregation statistics.
info command/start.go:145 Release [dev]: verification (master-e8da185c2c-06249f1a78) by Bjørn Sørensen, author Bjørn Sørensen
A Slack message is pushed to a #releases-<env> Slack channel.
Grafana is annotated with release metadata and tag deployment.
If the artifact provider is GitHub and a GitHub API token is provided (--github-api-token) the application source repository is tagged with <env> on the released Git SHA.
Tracing support
The server collects Jaeger spans. This is enabled by default and reported as service release-manager.
The jaeger configuration can be customized with available environment variables.
For local development a jaeger all-in-one instance can be created with Docker running make jaeger.
The Jaeger UI will be available on localhost:16686.
To disable collection set JAEGER_DISABLED=true.
hamctl
hamctl is a thin CLI for interacting with the release-manager server. The different commands implemented in hamctl is visible in the previous section.
hamctl uses a token-based authentication model for interacting with the release-manager. This can either be provided as command-line argument --http-auth-token og set using a ENV variable: HAMCTL_AUTH_TOKEN.
Completions
Shell completions are available with the command completion.
The following commands will add completions to the current shell in either bash or zsh.
source <(hamctl completion bash)
source <(hamctl completion zsh)
For a more detailed installation instruction see the help output.
hamctl completion --help
daemon
daemon is a small controller running in each of the environments and reports state changes in the environment back to the release-manager. daemon needs access to the kubernetes api server, and can be configured using a ServiceAccount.
daemon uses a token-based authentication model for interacting with the release-manager. This token can be set using the command-line argument --auth-token or the ENV variable: HAMCTL_AUTH_TOKEN
Directory structure
Files are structured as shown below.
Artifacts are stored in the artifacts directory.
It contains artifacts based of Git branches on the application repositories and must contain resource definitions for the environments that it is able to be released to.
In the root are folders for each environment, e.g. dev, prod.
These folders contain a releases directory with kubernetes resource definitions of each namespace and their running applications.
Provisioning setup resources are like wise stored here, e.g. kops yaml resources.
A policies directory holds all recorded release policies.
These are stored as JSON files for each service.
.
├── policies
│ └── <service>.json
├── artifacts
│ └── <service>
│ ├── <branches>
│ └── master
│ ├── artifact.json
│ ├── <environment>
│ └── dev
│ ├── 01-configmap.yaml
│ ├── 02-db-configmap.yaml
│ ├── 40-deployment.yaml
│ └── 50-service.yaml
├── <environments>
└── dev
├── provisioning
└── releases
├── <namespaces>
└── dev
└── <service>
├── artifact.json
├── 01-configmap.yaml
├── 02-db-configmap.yaml
├── 40-deployment.yaml
└── 50-service.yaml
When running kubectl apply files are applied to the cluster alphabetically so the following convention should be used by configuration generators.
00 CRDs
01-09 configmaps
10-19 secrets
20-29 volumes
30-39 rbac
40-49 deployments/daemonsets
50-59 service
60-69 ingress
Resources starting with 00_ will skip resource validation. CustomResourceDefintions does not work with the used resource validation, thus they should always start with 00_.
Installation
Access to the config repository
The release manager needs read/write permissions to the config repo.
To create a secret that the release manager can consume: (expects that the filename is identity)
kubectl create secret generic release-manager-git-deploy --from-file=identity=key
This secret should be mounted to /etc/release-manager/ssh
Development
The Makefile exposes targets for building, testing and deploying the release manager and its CLIs.
See it for details.
The most common operations are build and tests.
$ make build
go build -o dist/hamctl ./cmd/hamctl
go build -o dist/server ./cmd/server
go build -o dist/artifact ./cmd/artifact
$ make build_server
go build -o dist/server ./cmd/server
$ make test
go test -v ./...
e2e setup
To help development it is possible to use the e2e setup.
This setup is based a kubernetes cluster managed by kind. The following resources is setup up
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
source-git-repo |
A local git repository in e2e-test/source-git-repo that is used as the config repository. |
fluxd |
The fluxd service inside the k8s cluster, which is connected to the source-git-repo. It is polling the repo for changes every 5s, so it triggers as soon as a commit is done in source-git-repo, like a webhook from github normally would. Additionally fluxd is setup to --connect to release-daemon |
release-daemon |
A locally built binary of the release-daemon, but running inside the k8s cluster. The binary is mounted from local e2e-test/binaries for quick rebuild, so the pod can just be restarted while developing. This is done using the rebuild or watch actions. |
release-server |
A locally built binary of the release-daemon, that is running in the same manner as the release-daemon |
rabbitmq |
A simply setup rabbitmq server for the release-manager |
e2e actions
To use the e2e setup there are the following actions supported:
| Action | Command | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Start e2e setup | make e2e-setup |
Start and initiate kind and e2e setup |
| Rebuild manager | make e2e-rebuild-local-manager |
Rebuild the manager and restart pod in e2e cluster |
| Rebuild daemon | make e2e-rebuild-local-daemon |
Like "Rebuild manager" but for the daemon |
| Watch manager | make e2e-rebuild-local-manager |
Watch source code changes and rebuild the manager and restart pod in e2e cluster. Requires nodemon |
| Watch daemon | make e2e-rebuild-local-daemon |
Like "Watch manager" but for the daemon |
| Do dummy release | make e2e-do-release |
Do a release in git repo to trigger fluxd change |
| Do failing dummy release | make e2e-do-bad-release |
Do a bad release in git repo to trigger fluxd error |
| Do another dummy release | make e2e-do-another-release |
Do another kind of release in git repo to trigger fluxd change |
| Stop e2e setup | make e2e-teardown |
Stop and cleanup the e2e setup |
Release
There are multiple applications in this repo.
This project is configured with goreleaser and releases all 4 applications at once.
The release-manager server and the release-daemon is available as docker images, besides raw binaries.
Directories