This page describes how to configure Cloud Deploy to render the configuration for each target in a delivery pipeline.
Cloud Deploy uses Skaffold to render your Kubernetes manifests. The service supports rendering of raw manifests and more advanced manifest-management tools, such as Helm, Kustomize, and kpt.
The rendering process has two stages:
The manifest-management tool generates the manifest.
Skaffold substitutes the image references in the manifest with the images you want to deploy in your release.
This page includes configuration examples using Helm and Kustomize.
Using Skaffold to generate your configuration
If you don't already have a Skaffold configuration file (skaffold.yaml
), you
can use Skaffold to generate one for you, based on what's in your repository.
Install Skaffold using Google Cloud CLI:
gcloud components install skaffold
Run
skaffold init
in the repository that contains your manifests:skaffold init --skip-build
This command creates a skaffold.yaml
file in your repository. That file
references the manifests in that repository. The contents look like this:
apiVersion: skaffold/v4beta7
kind: Config
metadata:
name: sample-app
manifests:
rawYaml:
- k8s-manifests/deployment.yaml
- k8s-manifests/rbac.yaml
- k8s-manifests/redis.yaml
- k8s-manifests/service.yaml
Rendering raw manifests
Raw manifests are manifests that aren't managed by a tool like Helm or Kustomize, and therefore don't need any pre-processing before being hydrated and deployed to a cluster.
By default, Cloud Deploy uses skaffold render
to render your Kubernetes manifests, replacing untagged image names with the
tagged image names of the container images you're deploying. Then when you
promote the release, Cloud Deploy uses
skaffold apply
to apply the manifests and deploy the images to your Google Kubernetes Engine
cluster.
A manifests
stanza from a basic configuration looks like this:
manifests:
rawYaml:
- PATH_TO_MANIFEST
See the Skaffold documentation for more information on what values can be passed here.
Rendering using Helm
You can use Cloud Deploy to render your Helm
charts. To do so, you include Helm chart details in a deploy
stanza in a
Skaffold profile.
Each such definition looks like this:
apiVersion: skaffold/v4beta7
kind: Config
manifests:
helm:
releases:
- name: RELEASE_NAME
chartPath: PATH_TO_HELM_CHART
Where:
RELEASE_NAME is the name of the Helm chart instance for this release.
PATH_TO_HELM_CHART is the local path to a packaged Helm chart or an unpacked Helm chart directory.
You can use additional Helm configuration options, as described in the Skaffold documentation
Rendering using Kustomize
You can use Kustomize with Cloud Deploy. To
do so, you point to the Kustomization files from within the deploy
stanza in
your skaffold.yaml
profile configuration.
You include a separate Kustomize configuration for each target for which you're
using Kustomize, under each corresponding profile
in your skaffold.yaml
.
Each such definition looks like this:
apiVersion: skaffold/v4beta7
kind: Config
manifests:
kustomize:
paths:
- PATH_TO_KUSTOMIZE
Where:
PATH_TO_KUSTOMIZE points to your Kustomization files. The default is
["."]
You can use additional Kustomize configuration options, as described in the Skaffold documentation
Configuring different manifests per target
Often each target needs a slightly different configuration. For example, you might have more replicas in your production deployments than in your staging deployments.
You can render a different set of manifests for each target by providing each variation as a different Skaffold profile.
Profiles with Raw manifests
When working with raw manifests you can point Cloud Deploy at a different file, depending on the target. You could configure that as follows:
apiVersion: skaffold/v4beta7
kind: Config
profiles:
- name: prod
manifests:
rawYaml:
- prod.yaml
- name: staging
manifests:
rawYaml:
- staging.yaml
Profiles with Kustomize
Here's an example skaffold.yaml
that has different profiles for staging and
production using Kustomize, where each profile points to a different
Kustomization:
apiVersion: skaffold/v4beta7
kind: Config
profiles:
- name: prod
manifests:
kustomize:
paths:
- environments/prod
- name: staging
manifests:
kustomize:
paths:
- environments/staging
Profiles referenced in the delivery pipeline
These profiles, defined in skaffold.yaml
, are referenced in the delivery
pipeline config, per target:
serialPipeline:
stages:
- targetId: staging-target
profiles:
- staging
- targetId: prod-target
profiles:
- prod
What's next
- Learn more about Cloud Deploy delivery pipeline configuration.
- Try the Cloud Deploy Skaffold profiles walkthrough
- Learn more about Kustomize.
- Learn more about Helm.
- Learn more about Kpt
- Consider using Artifact Registry to store artifacts such as Helm charts or Kustomizations.