The FASTEST way to deploy apps to Kubernetes - GitOps with FLUX

I think I found the perfect GitOps and DevOps toolkit with FluxCD and Kubernetes. Flux is an open source GitOps solution that helps your deploy app and infrastructure with automation. It can monitor git repositories, source control, image container repositories, helm repositories, and more. It can install apps using Kustomize, Helm, Kubernetes manifests so it’s designed to fit into your existing workflow. It can even push alerts to your chat system letting you know when deployments happen. In this tutorial we’ll cover all of this and more.

https://fluxcd.io

Be sure to ⭐ the Flux GitHub repo

📺 Watch Video

Kubernetes Cluster

If you’re looking to install your own Kubernetes cluster, be sure to check out this video that creates a cluster with Ansible

Reference Repo

If you’re looking for the repo I created this in video, you can find it here /demos/flux-demo

Install Flux CLI

curl -s https://fluxcd.io/install.sh | sudo bash

Installing Flux using a GitHub Repo

You’ll need to grab a personal access token from here

flux bootstrap github \
  --components-extra=image-reflector-controller,image-automation-controller \
  --owner=YourGitHUbUserName \
  --repository=flux \
  --branch=main \
  --path=clusters/home \
  --personal \
  --token-auth

Check flux pods

kubectl get pods -n flux-system

Source Controller (installing manifests)

See reference repo for files, located in /demos/flux-demo

Helm Controller (installing helm charts)

See reference repo for files, /demos/flux-demo

Image Automation Controller (monitoring a container registry)

See reference repo for files, /demos/flux-demo

First create a workload (see redis deployment file)

Deploy the redis workload (deployment.yml)

git add -A && \
git commit -m "add redis deployment" && \
git push origin main

Create ImageRepository in the cluster, namespace, and chart that correspond.

flux create image repository podinfo \
--image=redis \
--interval=1m \
--export > ./clusters/home/default/redis/redis-registry.yaml

Create ImagePolicy in the cluster, namespace, and chart that correspond.

flux create image policy podinfo \
--image-ref=podinfo \
--select-semver=5.0.x \
--export > ./clusters/home/default/redis/redis-policy.yaml

Then deploy the ImageRepository and ImagePolicy

git add -A && \
git commit -m "add redis image scan" && \
git push origin main

tell flux to apply changes

flux reconcile kustomization flux-system --with-source

Now edit your deployment.yml and add a comment

    spec:
      containers:
      - name: redis
        image: redis:6.0.0 # {"$imagepolicy": "flux-system:redis"}

Create ImageUpdateAutomation

flux create image update flux-system \
--git-repo-ref=flux-system \
--git-repo-path="./clusters/home" \
--checkout-branch=main \
--push-branch=main \
--author-name=fluxcdbot \
--author-email=fluxcdbot@users.noreply.github.com \
--commit-template="" \
--export > ./clusters/home/flux-system-automation.yaml

Commit and deploy

git add -A && \
git commit -m "add image updates automation" && \
git push origin main

tell flux to apply changes

flux reconcile kustomization flux-system --with-source

Now do a git pull to see that flux has applied the tags

git pull

Your deployment.yml should be updated and it should be deployed to your cluster!

    spec:
      containers:
      - name: redis
        image: redis:6.0.16 # {"$imagepolicy": "flux-system:redis"}

Notifications

Create a secret

kubectl -n flux-system create secret generic discord-url \
--from-literal=address=https://discord.com/api/webhooks/YOUR/WEBHOOK/URL

Create a notification provider

apiVersion: notification.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta1
kind: Provider
metadata:
  name: discord
  namespace: flux-system
spec:
  type: discord
  channel: general
  secretRef:
    name: discord-url

Define an Alert

apiVersion: notification.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta1
kind: Alert
metadata:
  name: on-call-webapp
  namespace: flux-system
spec:
  providerRef:
    name: discord
  eventSeverity: info
  eventSources:
    - kind: GitRepository
      name: '*'
    - kind: Kustomization
      name: '*'

Get alerts

kubectl -n flux-system get alerts

NAME             READY   STATUS        AGE
on-call-webapp   True    Initialized   1m

Updating Flux

If you need to update flux, check out Updating Flux Installation Using the Latest Binary from CLI

Links

⚙️ See all the hardware I recommend at https://l.technotim.live/gear

🚀 Don’t forget to check out the 🚀Launchpad repo with all of the quick start source files