Lab
A Cloud Guru

Minikube: Using Helm

In this hands-on lab we will be looking at using Helm to deploy a microservice stack in our Minikube cluster. We will be using the Instana robot-shop application as an example.

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Path Info

Level

Beginner

Duration

30m

Published

Nov 26, 2019

Challenge

Start the Minikube Cluster Using the Correct Driver
Issue the command to start Minikube
```
sudo minikube start --vm-driver none
```
Challenge

Unpack Helm, Move it into the Path, Install Socat and Run helm init
Unpack the helm.tar.gz file that is sitting in our home directory:
```
tar -xvzf ~/helm.tar.gz
```
Move the helm and tiller executables into the path at /usr/local/bin:
```
sudo mv ./linux-amd64/helm /usr/local/bin
sudo mv ./linux-amd64/tiller /usr/local/bin
```
To test, run helm version from our home directory. This means it's in our path and we can run helm commands from anywhere.

Initialize Helm:
```
sudo helm init
```
Check that helm and tiller are up and available:
```
sudo helm version
```
Helm requires socat in order to run, but it is already installed on your lab server.
Challenge

Install the Robot-Shop Application into Its Own Namespace via Helm
Get into the directory containing the Helm chart:
```
cd ~/robot-shop/K8s/helm
```
Create the name space:
```
sudo kubectl create namespace robot-shop
```
Run the Helm installation:
```
sudo helm install --name robot-shop --namespace robot-shop .
```
Verify that the pods are running:
```
sudo kubectl -n robot-shop get po
```
It might take a couple of minutes for all the pods to stand up.
Challenge

Edit the Web Service to Use Nodeport and Configure Nginx to Proxy to the Web Service
Edit the web service:
```
sudo kubectl -n robot-shop edit service web
```
Edit the service spec similar to this (changing LoadBalancer to NodePort):
```
  selector:
    service: web
  sessionAffinity: None
  type: NodePort
```
Make sure our change took effect:
```
sudo kubectl -n robot-shop get service web
```
Get the target port from Minikube:
```
sudo minikube service list
```
Pay attention to TARGET PORT on web. We'll need that in a minute.

Configure Nginx to proxy to the target port from service list. Get the file open for editing:
```
sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
```
Now, down at about line 50, we've got to change something in the location section. We'll paste that TARGET PORT we saw earlier in here, replacing the existing line with what's shown here (the proxy_pass line):
```
location / {
        # First attempt to serve request as file, then
        # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
        proxy_pass http://<minikube IP>:<svc port>;
```
Our changes should take effect after an Nginx restart:
```
sudo systemctl restart nginx
```
Open a browser and point it to our server's public IP address to ensure the application is running.

Author

A Cloud Guru

The Cloud Content team comprises subject matter experts hyper focused on services offered by the leading cloud vendors (AWS, GCP, and Azure), as well as cloud-related technologies such as Linux and DevOps. The team is thrilled to share their knowledge to help you build modern tech solutions from the ground up, secure and optimize your environments, and so much more!

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