Flagger install on Kubernetes with SuperGloo

This guide walks you through setting up Flagger on a Kubernetes cluster using SuperGloo.

SuperGloo by Solo.io is an opinionated abstraction layer that will simplify the installation, management, and operation of your service mesh. It supports running multiple ingress with multiple mesh (Istio, App Mesh, Consul Connect and Linkerd 2) in the same cluster.

Prerequisites

Flagger requires a Kubernetes cluster v1.11 or newer with the following admission controllers enabled:

MutatingAdmissionWebhook
ValidatingAdmissionWebhook

Install Istio with SuperGloo

Download SuperGloo CLI and add it to your path:

curl -sL https://run.solo.io/supergloo/install | sh
export PATH=$HOME/.supergloo/bin:$PATH

Deploy the SuperGloo controller in the supergloo-system namespace:

supergloo init

Create the istio-system namespace and install Istio with traffic management, telemetry and Prometheus enabled:

ISTIO_VER="1.0.6"

kubectl create ns istio-system

supergloo install istio --name istio \
--namespace=supergloo-system \
--auto-inject=true \
--installation-namespace=istio-system \
--mtls=false \
--prometheus=true \
--version ${ISTIO_VER}

Create a cluster role binding so that Flagger can manipulate SuperGloo custom resources:

kubectl create clusterrolebinding flagger-supergloo \
--clusterrole=mesh-discovery \
--serviceaccount=istio-system:flagger

Wait for the Istio control plane to become available:

kubectl -n istio-system rollout status deployment/istio-sidecar-injector
kubectl -n istio-system rollout status deployment/prometheus

Install Flagger

Add Flagger Helm repository:

helm repo add flagger https://flagger.app

Deploy Flagger in the istio-system namespace and set the service mesh provider to SuperGloo:

helm upgrade -i flagger flagger/flagger \
--namespace=istio-system \
--set metricsServer=http://prometheus.istio-system:9090 \
--set meshProvider=supergloo:istio.supergloo-system

When using SuperGloo the mesh provider format is supergloo:<MESH-NAME>.<SUPERGLOO-NAMESPACE>.

Optionally you can enable Slack notifications:

helm upgrade -i flagger flagger/flagger \
--reuse-values \
--namespace=istio-system \
--set slack.url=https://hooks.slack.com/services/YOUR/SLACK/WEBHOOK \
--set slack.channel=general \
--set slack.user=flagger

Install Grafana

Flagger comes with a Grafana dashboard made for monitoring the canary analysis.

Deploy Grafana in the istio-system namespace:

helm upgrade -i flagger-grafana flagger/grafana \
--namespace=istio-system \
--set url=http://prometheus.istio-system:9090

You can access Grafana using port forwarding:

kubectl -n istio-system port-forward svc/flagger-grafana 3000:80

Install Load Tester

Flagger comes with an optional load testing service that generates traffic during canary analysis when configured as a webhook.

Deploy the load test runner with Helm:

helm upgrade -i flagger-loadtester flagger/loadtester \
--namespace=test \
--set cmd.timeout=1h

Deploy with kubectl:

helm fetch --untar --untardir . flagger/loadtester &&
helm template loadtester \
--name flagger-loadtester \
--namespace=test
> $HOME/flagger-loadtester.yaml

# apply
kubectl apply -f $HOME/flagger-loadtester.yaml

Note

that the load tester should be deployed in a namespace with Istio sidecar injection enabled.

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