Tutorial on Build. Run. Repeat.

HashiCorp Consul Service Mesh on Kubernetes Series - Part 1 - Introduction and Setup

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 09:00:00 -0400

Modern cloud-native architectures rely heavily on microservices, and Kubernetes has become the go-to platform for deploying, managing, and scaling these distributed applications. As the number of microservices grows, ensuring secure, reliable, and observable service-to-service communication becomes increasingly complex. This is where service mesh solutions, such as HashiCorp Consul, step in to provide a seamless approach to managing these challenges. In this blog post, we will delve into the integration of HashiCorp Consul Service Mesh with Kubernetes, exploring its architecture, features, and step-by-step deployment guide.

HashiCorp Vault Enterprise - Performance Replication on Kubernetes

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 09:00:00 -0400

This blog post dives into the technical implementation of Vault Enterprise replication within a Kubernetes environment. We’ll explore how to set up performance and disaster recovery replication, overcome common challenges, and ensure smooth synchronization between clusters. Whether you’re aiming for redundancy or better data locality, this guide will equip you with the insights and tools needed to leverage Vault’s enterprise-grade features in Kubernetes effectively.

Architecture

Prerequisites

2 Kubernetes clusters. *Note: for simulation purposes, you can also use a single Kubernetes cluster with multiple namespaces to host both Vault clusters.
Helm installed
kubectl installed
Vault CLI installed
jq installed
Vault Enterprise license

Note: for this implementation LoadBalancer services are used on Kubernetes to expose the Vault services (the API/UI and the cluster address for replication). It is highly recommended to use a LoadBalancer rather than ingress to expose the cluster address for replication. Vault itself performs the TLS termination as the TLS certificates are mounted to the Vault pods from Kubernetes. Additionally, note that when enabling the replication, the primary cluster points to the secondary cluster address (port 8201) and not the API/UI address (port 8200). When the secondary cluster applies the replication token, however, it points to the API/UI address (port 8200) to unwrap it and compelete the setup of the replication. We will see this in more detail in the implementation section.

Using HashiCorp Vault as Ingress TLS Certificate Issuer in TAP

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 09:00:00 -0400

Using HashiCorp Vault as Ingress TLS Certificate Issuer in TAP

Tanzu Application Platform (TAP) uses Contour HTTPProxy resources to expose several web components externally via ingress. Some of these components include the API Auto Registration, API Portal, Application Live View, Metadata Store, and TAP GUI. Web workloads deployed through TAP also leverage the same method for their ingress resources. For example:

$ kubectl get httpproxy -A

NAMESPACE NAME FQDN TLS SECRET STATUS STATUS DESCRIPTION
api-auto-registration api-auto-registration-controller api-auto-registration.tap.cloudnativeapps.cloud api-auto-registration-cert valid Valid HTTPProxy
api-portal api-portal api-portal.tap.cloudnativeapps.cloud api-portal-tls-cert valid Valid HTTPProxy
app-live-view appliveview appliveview.tap.cloudnativeapps.cloud appliveview-cert valid Valid HTTPProxy
metadata-store amr-cloudevent-handler-ingress amr-cloudevent-handler.tap.cloudnativeapps.cloud amr-cloudevent-handler-ingress-cert valid Valid HTTPProxy
metadata-store amr-graphql-ingress amr-graphql.tap.cloudnativeapps.cloud amr-ingress-cert valid Valid HTTPProxy
metadata-store metadata-store-ingress metadata-store.tap.cloudnativeapps.cloud ingress-cert valid Valid HTTPProxy
tap-demo-01 spring-petclinic-contour-76691bbb1936a7b010ca900ce58a3f57spring spring-petclinic.tap-demo-01.svc.cluster.local valid Valid HTTPProxy
tap-demo-01 spring-petclinic-contour-88f827fbdc09abbb4ee2b887bba100edspring spring-petclinic.tap-demo-01.tap.cloudnativeapps.cloud tap-demo-01/route-a4b7b2c7-0a56-48b9-ad26-6b0e06ca1925 valid Valid HTTPProxy
tap-demo-01 spring-petclinic-contour-spring-petclinic.tap-demo-01 spring-petclinic.tap-demo-01 valid Valid HTTPProxy
tap-demo-01 spring-petclinic-contour-spring-petclinic.tap-demo-01.svc spring-petclinic.tap-demo-01.svc valid Valid HTTPProxy
tap-gui tap-gui tap-gui.tap.cloudnativeapps.cloud tap-gui-cert valid Valid HTTPProxy

TAP uses a shared ingress issuer as a centralized certificate authority representation, providing a method to set up TLS for the entire platform. All participating components get their ingress certificates issued by it. This is the recommended best practice for issuing ingress certificates on the platform.

Streamlining and Customizing Windows Image Builder for TKG

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 09:00:00 -0400

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) is one of the few platforms providing out-of-the-box support and streamlined deployment of Windows Kubernetes clusters. VMware is actively investing in this area and constantly improving the support and capabilities around Windows on Kubernetes.

Unlike Linux-based clusters, for which VMware provides pre-packaged base OS images (typically based on Ubuntu and Photon OS), VMware cannot offer Windows pre-packaged images, primarily due to licensing restrictions, I suppose. Therefore, building your own Windows base OS image is one of the prerequisites for deploying a TKG Windows workload cluster. Fortunately, VMware leverages the upstream Image Builder project - a fantastic collection of cross-provider Kubernetes virtual machine image-building utilities intended to simplify and streamline the creation of base OS images for Kubernetes.

Tanzu Kubernetes Grid GPU Integration

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 09:00:00 -0400

I recently had to demonstrate Tanzu Kubernetes Grid and its GPU integration capabilities. Developing a good use case and assembling the demo required some preliminary research.

During my research, I reached out to Jay Vyas, staff engineer at VMware, SIG Windows lead for Kubernetes, a Kubernetes legend, and an awesome guy in general. :) For those who don’t know Jay, he is also one of the authors of the fantastic book Core Kubernetes (look it up!).

Getting Started with Carvel ytt - Real-World Examples

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 09:00:00 -0400

Over the years of working with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG), one tool has stood out as a game-changer for resource customization: Carvel’s ytt. Whether tailoring cluster manifests, customizing TKG packages, or addressing unique deployment requirements, ytt has consistently been a fundamental part of the workflow. Its flexibility, power, and declarative approach make it an essential tool for anyone working deeply with Kubernetes in a TKG ecosystem.

But what exactly is ytt? Short for YAML Templating Tool, ytt is part of the Carvel suite of tools designed for Kubernetes resource management. It provides a powerful, programmable approach to templating YAML configurations by combining straightforward data values, overlays, and scripting capabilities. Unlike many traditional templating tools, ytt prioritizes structure and intent, making it easier to maintain, validate, and debug configurations—particularly in complex, large-scale Kubernetes environments.

Customizing Elasticsearch indices using Fluent-Bit in TKG

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 09:00:00 -0400

Fluent-Bit is currently the preferred option for log shipping in TKG and is provided out of the box as a Tanzu package that can be easily deployed on each TKG/Kubernetes cluster.

A recent implementation required shipping all Kubernetes logs to Elasticsearch, complying with a specific naming convention for the Elasticsearch indices.

Applying such customizations requires you to utilize the Lua filter. Using the Lua filter, you can modify incoming records by invoking custom scripts to apply your logic when processing the records.

Kubernetes Data Protection: Getting Started with Kasten (K10)

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 09:00:00 -0400

In a recent Kubernetes project I was involved in, our team had to conduct an in-depth proof of concept for several Kubernetes data protection solutions. The main highlights of the PoC covered data protection for stateful applications and databases, disaster recovery, and application mobility, including relocating applications across Kubernetes clusters and even different types of Kubernetes clusters (for example, from TKG on-premise to AWS EKS, etc.).

One of the solutions we evaluated was Kasten (K10), a data management platform for Kubernetes, which is now a part of Veeam. The implementation of Kasten was one of the smoothest we have ever experienced in terms of ease of use, stability, and general clarity around getting things done, as everything is very well documented, which certainly cannot be taken for granted these days. :)

Production-Grade Multi-Cluster TAP Installation Guide

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 09:00:00 -0400

Introduction
Prerequisites
Prepare your Workstation
Relocate TAP Images to your Private Registry
Install TAP
Wrap Up

Introduction

Since my previous posts on TAP Overview and Backstage, I have been diving deeper into TAP, trying to establish the practices around it.