Installing Deis Workflow¶

This document is aimed at those who have already provisioned a Kubernetes v1.3.4+ cluster and want to install Deis Workflow. If help is required getting started with Kubernetes and Deis Workflow, follow the quickstart guide for assistance.

Prerequisites¶

Verify the Kubernetes system requirements
Install Helm and Deis Workflow CLI tools

Check Your Setup¶

Check that the helm command is available and the version is v2.5.0 or newer.

$ helm version
Client: &version.Version{SemVer:"v2.5.0", GitCommit:"012cb0ac1a1b2f888144ef5a67b8dab6c2d45be6", GitTreeState:"clean"}
Server: &version.Version{SemVer:"v2.5.0", GitCommit:"012cb0ac1a1b2f888144ef5a67b8dab6c2d45be6", GitTreeState:"clean"}

Check Your Authorization¶

If your cluster uses RBAC for authorization, helm will need to be granted the necessary permissions to create Workflow resources. This can be done with the following commands:

$ kubectl create sa tiller-deploy -n kube-system
$ kubectl create clusterrolebinding helm --clusterrole=cluster-admin --serviceaccount=kube-system:tiller-deploy
$ helm init --service-account=tiller-deploy

If helm is already installed in cluster without sufficient rights, simply add --upgrade to the init command above.

Note: Specific helm permissions haven't been sorted yet and details may change (watch helm docs)

Choose Your Deployment Strategy¶

Deis Workflow includes everything it needs to run out of the box. However, these defaults are aimed at simplicity rather than production readiness. Production and staging deployments of Workflow should, at a minimum, use off-cluster storage which is used by Workflow components to store and backup critical data. Should an operator need to completely re-install Workflow, the required components can recover from off-cluster storage. See the documentation for configuring object storage for more details.

More rigorous installations would benefit from using outside sources for the following things: Postgres - For example AWS RDS. Registry - This includes quay.io, dockerhub, Amazon ECR, and Google GCR. Redis - Such as AWS Elasticache InfluxDB and Grafana

(Experimental) Kubernetes Native Ingress¶

Workflow now offers experimental native ingress to take advantage of native Kubernetes routing. Any compatible Kubernetes ingress controller can be used in place of Workflow's nginx-based deis-router. Follow this guide to enable experimental native ingress.

Add the Deis Chart Repository¶

The Deis Chart Repository contains everything needed to install Deis Workflow onto a Kubernetes cluster, with a single helm install deis/workflow --namespace deis command.

Add this repository to Helm:

$ helm repo add deis https://charts.deis.com/workflow

Install Deis Workflow¶

Now that Helm is installed and the repository has been added, install Workflow by running:

$ helm install deis/workflow --namespace deis

Helm will install a variety of Kubernetes resources in the deis namespace. Wait for the pods that Helm launched to be ready. Monitor their status by running:

$ kubectl --namespace=deis get pods

If it's preferred to have kubectl automatically update as the pod states change, run (type Ctrl-C to stop the watch):

$ kubectl --namespace=deis get pods -w

Depending on the order in which the Workflow components initialize, some pods may restart. This is common during the installation: if a component's dependencies are not yet available, that component will exit and Kubernetes will automatically restart it.

Here, it can be seen that the controller, builder and registry all took a few loops before they were able to start:

$ kubectl --namespace=deis get pods
NAME                                     READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
deis-builder-574483744-l15zj             1/1       Running   0          4m
deis-controller-3953262871-pncgq         1/1       Running   2          4m
deis-database-83844344-47ld6             1/1       Running   0          4m
deis-logger-176328999-wjckx              1/1       Running   4          4m
deis-logger-fluentd-zxnqb                1/1       Running   0          4m
deis-logger-redis-304849759-1f35p        1/1       Running   0          4m
deis-minio-676004970-nxqgt               1/1       Running   0          4m
deis-monitor-grafana-432627134-lnl2h     1/1       Running   0          4m
deis-monitor-influxdb-2729788615-m9b5n   1/1       Running   0          4m
deis-monitor-telegraf-wmcmn              1/1       Running   1          4m
deis-nsqd-3597503299-6mn2x               1/1       Running   0          4m
deis-registry-756475849-lwc6b            1/1       Running   1          4m
deis-registry-proxy-96c4p                1/1       Running   0          4m
deis-router-2126433040-6sl6z             1/1       Running   0          4m
deis-workflow-manager-2528409207-jkz2r   1/1       Running   0          4m

Once all of the pods are in the READY state, Deis Workflow is up and running!

After installing Workflow, register a user and deploy an application.