Typhoon Kubernetes Distribution

I stumbled across a very interesting Kubernetes distribution called Typhoon which runs a self-hosted control-plane using Bootkube running on CoreOS. Typhoon uses Terraform to deploy the required instances on various cloud providers or on bare-metal servers. I really like the concept of a minimal Kubernetes distribution and a simple bootstrap to deploy a full featured cluster in a few minutes. Check out the official Typhoon website or their Github repository for more information.

To install Typhoon I followed the documentation, everything is pretty simple with a bit of Terraform knowledge. Here’s my Github repository with my cluster configuration: https://github.com/berndonline/typhoon-kubernetes/tree/aws

Before you start you need to install Terraform v0.11.x and terraform-provider-ct, and setup a AWS Route53 domain for the Kubernetes cluster.

I created a new subdomain on Route53 and configured delegation on CloudFlare for the domain.

Let’s checkout the configuration, first the cluster.tf which I have modified slightly because I use Jenkins to deploy the Kubernetes cluster.

module "aws-cluster" {
  source = "git::https://github.com/poseidon/typhoon//aws/container-linux/kubernetes?ref=v1.13.3"

  providers = {
    aws = "aws.default"
    local = "local.default"
    null = "null.default"
    template = "template.default"
    tls = "tls.default"
  }

  # AWS
  cluster_name = "typhoon"
  dns_zone     = "${var.dns}"
  dns_zone_id  = "${var.dns_id}"

  # configuration
  ssh_authorized_key = "${var.ssh_key}"
  asset_dir          = "./.secrets/clusters/typhoon"

  # optional
  worker_count = 2
  worker_type  = "t3.small"
}

In the provider.tf I have only added S3 to be used for the Terraform backend state but otherwise I’ve left the defaults.

provider "aws" {
  version = "~> 1.13.0"
  alias   = "default"

  region  = "eu-west-1"
}

terraform {
  backend "s3" {
    bucket = "techbloc-terraform-data"
    key    = "openshift-311"
    region = "eu-west-1"
  }
}

...

I added a variables.tf file for the DNS and SSH variables.

variable "dns" {
}
variable "dns_id" {
}
variable "ssh_key" {
}

Let’s have a quick look at my simple Jenkins pipeline to deploy Typhoon Kubernetes. Apart from installing Kubernetes I am deploying the Nginx Ingress controller and  Heapster addons for the cluster. I’ve also added an example application I have used previously after deploying the cluster.

pipeline {
    agent any
    environment {
        AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID = credentials('AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID')
        AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = credentials('AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY')
        TF_VAR_dns = credentials('TF_VAR_dns')
        TF_VAR_dns_id = credentials('TF_VAR_dns_id')
        TF_VAR_ssh_key = credentials('TF_VAR_ssh_key')
    }
    stages {
        stage('Prepare workspace') {
            steps {
                sh 'rm -rf *'
                git branch: 'aws', url: 'https://github.com/berndonline/typhoon-kubernetes.git'
                sh 'terraform init'
            }
        }
        stage('terraform apply') {
            steps {
                sshagent (credentials: ['fcdca8fa-aab9-3846-832f-4756392b7e2c']) {
                    sh 'terraform apply -auto-approve'
                    sh 'sleep 30'
                }
            }
        }
        stage('deploy nginx-ingress and heapster') {
            steps {    
                sh 'kubectl apply -R -f ./nginx-ingress/ --kubeconfig=./.secrets/clusters/typhoon/auth/kubeconfig'
                sh 'kubectl apply -R -f ./heapster/ --kubeconfig=./.secrets/clusters/typhoon/auth/kubeconfig'
                sh 'sleep 30'
            }
        }
        stage('deploy example application') {
            steps {    
                sh 'kubectl apply -f ./example/hello-kubernetes.yml --kubeconfig=./.secrets/clusters/typhoon/auth/kubeconfig'
            }
        }
        stage('Run terraform destroy') {
            steps {
                input 'Run terraform destroy?'
            }
        }
        stage('terraform destroy') {
            steps {
                sshagent (credentials: ['fcdca8fa-aab9-3846-832f-4756392b7e2c']) {
                    sh 'terraform destroy -force'
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Let’s start the Jenkins pipeline:

Let’s check if I can access the hello-kubernetes application. For everyone who is interested, this is the link to the Github repository for the hello-kubernetes example application I have used.

I really like the Typhoon Kubernetes distribution and the work that went into it to create a easy way for everyone to install a Kubernetes cluster and start using it in a few minutes. I also find the way they’ve used Terraform and Bootkube to deploy the platform on CoreOS very inspiring and it gave me some ideas how I can make use of it for production clusters.

I actually like CoreOS and the easy bootstrapping with Terraform and Bootkube which I have not used before, I’ve always deployed OpenShift/Kubernetes on either RedHat or CentOS with Ansible, and find it a very interesting way to deploy a Kubernetes platform.