Deploy an application

This document gives an example of how to deploy an application in a user cluster for GKE on VMware.

Before you begin

For the example given here, you need a user cluster that uses bundled MetalLB load balancing. For instructions on creating a minimal user cluster that uses MetalLB, see Create basic clusters.

You can use either the Google Cloud console or the command-line tool kubectl on your admin workstation to deploy the application.

Console

  1. In the console, go to the Google Kubernetes Engine clusters overview page.

    Go to GKE clusters

  2. In the list of clusters, click your user cluster, and verify that you are logged in to the cluster.

    If you aren't already logged in to your user cluster, log in by following the instructions in Manage clusters from the Google Cloud console.

Containers

  1. Under New container, select Existing container image.

  2. For Image path, enter us-docker.pkg.dev/google-samples/containers/gke/hello-app:2.0.

  3. Click Continue.

Configuration

  1. For Deployment name, enter my-deployment.

  2. For Namespace, enter default.

  3. Enter these two labels:

    • Key 1: app, Value 1: metrics
    • Key 2: department, Value 2 sales
  4. In the Kubernetes cluster drop-down, select your cluster.

  5. Click Continue.

Expose

  1. Check Expose deployment as a new service.

  2. For Port 1, enter 80.

  3. For Target port 1, enter 8080. This is the appropriate value because the hello-app container listens on TCP port 8080 by default. You can see this by looking at the Dockerfile and the source code for the app.

  4. For Protocol 1, select TCP.

  5. For Service type, select LoadBalancer.

At the bottom of the page, click the Deploy button.

View Deployment and Service details

  1. When your Deployment is ready, the Deployment details page opens in the Kubernetes workloads section of the Google Cloud console. On this page, you can see details about the Deployment and its three Pods.

  2. Under Exposing services, click the name of the Service that exposes your Deployment. For this exercise, the name is my-deployment-service.

  3. The Service details page opens. On this page, you can see details about Service. For example, you can see that any Pod that has the labels app: metrics and department: sales is a member of the Service. Recall that the Pods in my-deployment have these labels.

You can also see a value for Load balancer IP. The load balancer IP has been automatically configured on the cluster load balancer.

Forwarding for the Service

Suppose a client outside the cluster sends a request to the load balancer IP on TCP port 80. The request gets routed to the cluster load balancer. The load balancer forwards the request to a member Pod on TCP port 8080. Recall that every Pod in my-deployment has a container listening on TCP port 8080.

Test your Service

Go to a machine where the load balancer IP is routable.

To call your Service, enter the load balancer IP in a browser, or use a command like curl. For example:

curl [LOAD_BALANCER_IP]:80

The output shows a Hello, world! message. For example:

curl 203.0.113.1:80
Hello, world!
Version: 2.0.0
Hostname: my-deployment-dbd86c8c4-9wpbv

Delete the Deployment

Go to the Workloads page in the Kubernetes Engine section of the console.

Go to the Workloads page

In the list of Deployments, select my-deployment.

At the top of the page, click Delete. This deletes both the Deployment and the exposing Service.

Command line

Connect to your admin workstation

Get an SSH connection to your admin workstation. Do the following steps on your admin workstation.

Create a Deployment

Here is a manifest for a Deployment:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: my-deployment
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: metrics
      department: sales
  replicas: 3
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: metrics
        department: sales
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: hello
        image: "us-docker.pkg.dev/google-samples/containers/gke/hello-app:2.0"

Copy the manifest to a file named my-deployment.yaml, and create the Deployment:

kubectl apply --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG -f my-deployment.yaml

where USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG is the path of the kubeconfig file for your user cluster.

Get basic information about your Deployment:

kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG get deployment my-deployment

The output shows that the Deployment has three Pods that are all available:

NAME            READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
my-deployment   3/3     3            3           27s

List the Pods in your Deployment:

kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG get pods

The output shows that your Deployment has three running Pods:

NAME                             READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
my-deployment-54944c8d55-4srm2   1/1     Running   0          6s
my-deployment-54944c8d55-7z5nn   1/1     Running   0          6s
my-deployment-54944c8d55-j62n9   1/1     Running   0          6s

Get detailed information about your Deployment:

kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG get deployment my-deployment --output yaml

The output shows details about the Deployment spec and status:

kind: Deployment
metadata:
  ...
  generation: 1
  name: my-deployment
  namespace: default
  ...
spec:
  ...
  replicas: 3
  revisionHistoryLimit: 10
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: metrics
      department: sales
  ...
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: us-docker.pkg.dev/google-samples/containers/gke/hello-app:2.0
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
        name: hello
        resources: {}
        terminationMessagePath: /dev/termination-log
        terminationMessagePolicy: File
      dnsPolicy: ClusterFirst
      restartPolicy: Always
      schedulerName: default-scheduler
      securityContext: {}
      terminationGracePeriodSeconds: 30
status:
  availableReplicas: 3
  conditions:
  ‑ lastTransitionTime: "2019-11-11T18:44:02Z"
    lastUpdateTime: "2019-11-11T18:44:02Z"
    message: Deployment has minimum availability.
    reason: MinimumReplicasAvailable
    status: "True"
    type: Available
  ‑ lastTransitionTime: "2019-11-11T18:43:58Z"
    lastUpdateTime: "2019-11-11T18:44:02Z"
    message: ReplicaSet "my-deployment-54944c8d55" has successfully progressed.
    reason: NewReplicaSetAvailable
    status: "True"
    type: Progressing
  observedGeneration: 1
  readyReplicas: 3
  replicas: 3
  updatedReplicas: 3

Describe your Deployment:

kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG describe deployment my-deployment

The output shows nicely formatted details about the Deployment, including the associated ReplicaSet:

Name:                   my-deployment
Namespace:              default
CreationTimestamp:      Mon, 11 Nov 2019 10:43:58 -0800
Labels:                 
...
Selector:               app=metrics,department=sales
Replicas:               3 desired | 3 updated | 3 total | 3 available | 0 unavailable
StrategyType:           RollingUpdate
MinReadySeconds:        0
RollingUpdateStrategy:  25% max unavailable, 25% max surge
Pod Template:
  Labels:  app=metrics
           department=sales
  Containers:
    hello:
    Image:        us-docker.pkg.dev/google-samples/containers/gke/hello-app:2.0
    Port:         
    Host Port:    
    Environment:  
    Mounts:       
  Volumes:        
Conditions:
  Type           Status  Reason
  ----           ------  ------
  Available      True    MinimumReplicasAvailable
  Progressing    True    NewReplicaSetAvailable
OldReplicaSets:  
NewReplicaSet:   my-deployment-54944c8d55 (3/3 replicas created)

Create a Service of type LoadBalancer

One way to expose your Deployment to clients outside your cluster is to create a Kubernetes Service of type LoadBalancer.

Here's a manifest for a Service of type LoadBalancer:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: my-service
spec:
  selector:
    app: metrics
    department: sales
  type: LoadBalancer
  ports:
  ‑ port: 80
    targetPort: 8080

For the purpose of this exercise, these are the important things to understand about the Service:

  • Any Pod that has the label app: metrics and the label department: sales is a member of the Service. Note that the Pods in my-deployment have these labels.

  • When a client sends a request to the Service on TCP port 80, the request is forwarded to a member Pod on TCP port 8080.

  • Every member Pod must have a container that is listening on TCP port 8080.

It happens that by default, the hello-app container listens on TCP port 8080. You can see this by looking at the Dockerfile and the source code for the app.

Save the manifest to a file named my-service.yaml, and create the Service:

kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG apply -f my-service.yaml

where USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG is the path of the kubeconfig file for your user cluster.

When you create the Service, GKE on VMware automatically configures the loadBalancerIP address on the cluster load balancer.

View your Service:

kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG get service my-service --output yaml

The output is similar to this:

kind: Service
metadata:
  ...
  name: my-service
  namespace: default
  ...
spec:
  allocateLoadBalancerNodePorts: true
  clusterIP: 10.96.1.39
  clusterIPs:
  - 10.96.1.39
  externalTrafficPolicy: Cluster
  internalTrafficPolicy: Cluster
  ipFamilies:
  - IPv4
  ipFamilyPolicy: SingleStack
  ports:
  - nodePort: 31184
    port: 80
    protocol: TCP
    targetPort: 8080
  selector:
    app: metrics
    department: sales
  sessionAffinity: None
  type: LoadBalancer
status:
  loadBalancer:
    ingress:
    - ip: 203.0.113.1

In the preceding output, you can see that your Service has a clusterIP, and a loadBalancerIP. It also has a port, and a targetPort.

The clusterIP is not relevant to this exercise. The loadBalancerIP is the IP address that clients outside the cluster can use to call the Service.

As an example, take the values shown in the preceding output. That is, suppose your Service has loadBalancerIP = 203.0.113.1, port = 80, and targetPort = 8080.

A client sends a request to 203.0.113.1 on TCP port 80. The request gets routed to the cluster load balancer. The load balancer forwards the request to a member Pod on TCP port 8080.

Call your Service:

curl LOAD_BALANCER_IP

The output shows a Hello, world! message:

curl 203.0.113.1
Hello, world!
Version: 2.0.0
Hostname: my-deployment-dbd86c8c4-9wpbv

Delete your Service

Delete your Service:

kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG delete service my-service

Verify that your Service has been deleted:

kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG get services

The output no longer shows my-service.

Delete your Deployment

Delete your Deployment:

kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG delete deployment my-deployment

Verify that your Deployment has been deleted:

kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG get deployments

The output no longer shows my-deployment.

What's next

Create a Service and an Ingress