flux-kluctl-controller

README

Flux Kluctl Controller

The Flux Kluctl Controller is a Kubernetes operator, specialized in running continuous delivery pipelines for infrastructure defined with kluctl.

Motivation

kluctl is a tool that allows you to declare and manage small, large, simple and/or complex multi-env and multi-cluster deployments. It is designed in a way that allows seamless co-existence of CLI centered DevOps and automation, for example in the form of GitOps/flux.

This means that you can continue doing local development of your deployments and test them from your local machine, for example by regularly running kluctl diff. When you believe you're done with your work, you can then commit your changes to Git and let the Flux Kluctl Controller do the actual deployment.

You could also have a dedicated target that you solely use for local development and deployment testing and then let the Flux Kluctl Controller handle the deployments to the real (e.g. pre-prod or prod) targets.

This way you can have both:

1. Easy and reliable development and testing of your deployments (no more change+commit+push+wait+error+retry cycles).
2. Consistent GitOps style automation.

The Flux Kluctl Controller supports all types of Kluctl projects, including simple ones where a single Git repository contains all necessary data and complex ones where for example clusters or target configurations are in other Git repositories.

Installation

Installation instructions can be found here

Design

The reconciliation process can be defined with a Kubernetes custom resource that describes a pipeline such as:

• fetch root kluctl project from source-controller (Git repository or S3 bucket)
• compare the current deployment with the last deployed one and bail out if nothing changed
• deploy the specified target via kluctl deploy
• prune orphaned objects via kluctl prune
• validate the deployment status via kluctl validate
• alert if something went wrong
• notify if the cluster state changed

The controller that runs these pipelines relies on source-controller for providing the root Kluctl project from Git repositories or any other source that source-controller could support in the future. If the root Kluctl project is located in a GitRepository, the Flux Kluctl Controller will reuse the Git credentials for all dependent Git repositories referenced by the project.

A pipeline runs on-a-schedule and ca be triggered manually by a cluster admin or automatically by a source event such as a Git revision change.

When a pipeline is removed from the cluster, the controller's GC terminates all the objects previously created by that pipeline.

A pipeline can be suspended, while in suspension the controller stops the scheduler and ignores any source events. Deleting a suspended pipeline does not trigger garbage collection.

Alerting can be configured with a Kubernetes custom resource that specifies a webhook address, and a group of pipelines to be monitored.

The API design of the controller can be found at kluctldeployment.flux.kluctl.io/v1beta1.

Example

After installing flux-kluctl-controller alongside a normal flux installation, we can create a Kluctl deployment that automatically deploys the Microservices Demo.

Create a source that points to the demo project.

apiVersion: source.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta1
kind: GitRepository
metadata:
  name: microservices-demo
  namespace: flux-system
spec:
  interval: 5m
  url: https://github.com/kluctl/kluctl-examples.git
  ref:
    branch: main

And a KluctlDeployment that uses the demo project source to deploy the test target to the same cluster that flux runs on.

apiVersion: flux.kluctl.io/v1alpha1
kind: KluctlDeployment
metadata:
  name: microservices-demo-test
  namespace: flux-system
spec:
  interval: 10m
  path: "./microservices-demo/3-templating-and-multi-env/"
  sourceRef:
    kind: GitRepository
    name: microservices-demo
  timeout: 2m
  target: test
  prune: true
  # kluctl cluster configs specify the expected context name, which does not necessarely match the context name
  # found while it is deployed via the controller. This means we must pass a kubeconfig to kluctl that has the
  # context renamed to the one that it expects.
  renameContexts:
    - oldContext: default
      newContext: kind-kind

This example will deploy a fully-fledged microservices application with multiple backend services, frontends and databases, all via one single KluctlDeployment.

To deploy the same Kluctl project to another target (e.g. prod), simply create the following resource.

apiVersion: flux.kluctl.io/v1alpha1
kind: KluctlDeployment
metadata:
  name: microservices-demo-prod
  namespace: flux-system
spec:
  interval: 10m
  path: "./microservices-demo/3-templating-and-multi-env/"
  sourceRef:
    kind: GitRepository
    name: microservices-demo
  timeout: 2m
  target: prod
  prune: true
  renameContexts:
    - oldContext: default
      newContext: kind-kind