Kubernetes on Genesis Cloud with Claudie!

By Jakub Hlavacka

22 July 2024

Intro

Claudie is a platform for managing multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud Kubernetes clusters. These Kubernetes clusters can mix and match nodepools from various cloud providers, e.g. a single cluster can have a nodepool in AWS, another in GCP and another one on-premises. In one of the recent releases 0.7.0, Claudie brings support for Genesis Cloud and its EU-hosted GPU instances. This article explains the process of setting up a Kubernetes cluster on Genesis.

Step 1 - Install Claudie

Claudie needs to be installed on an existing Kubernetes cluster, referred to as the Management Cluster, which is used to manage the clusters it provisions. For this tutorial, an ephemeral cluster like kind can be used for simplicity. This step assumes that you have kind installed locally.

For testing, you can use ephemeral clusters like Minikube or kind. However, for production environments, it is recommended to use a more resilient solution since Claudie maintains the state of the infrastructure it creates.

  1. Create a kind cluster and export the kubeconfig

    user@<your_host>:~# kind create cluster --name claudie-mgmt
    Creating cluster "claudie-mgmt" ...
     ✓ Ensuring node image (kindest/node:v1.27.3) 🖼
     ✓ Preparing nodes 📦
     ✓ Writing configuration 📜
     ✓ Starting control-plane 🕹️
     ✓ Installing CNI 🔌
     ✓ Installing StorageClass 💾
    Set kubectl context to "kind-claudie-mgmt"
    You can now use your cluster with:
    
    kubectl cluster-info --context kind-claudie-mgmt
    user@<your_host>:~# kind get kubeconfig -n claudie-mgmt > ~/.kube/claudie
    user@<your_host>:~# export KUBECONFIG=~/.kube/claudie
    user@<your_host>:~# kubectl get nodes
    NAME                         STATUS   ROLES           AGE    VERSION
    claudie-mgmt-control-plane   Ready    control-plane   3m8s   v1.27.3
  2. Install cert-manager as it is a requirement for the Claudie Management cluster.

    user@<your_host>:~# kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.12.0/cert-manager.yaml
  3. Deploy Claudie

    user@<your_host>:~# kubectl apply -f https://github.com/berops/claudie/releases/download/v0.8.1/claudie.yaml
  4. Wait for all Pods to get into Ready state

    user@<your_host>:~# kubectl -n claudie get pods
    NAME                                READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
    ansibler-858667d9d7-2r9z7           1/1     Running     0          2m17s
    builder-bd8d5f97b-89zpl             1/1     Running     0          2m17s
    claudie-operator-6bdcb4ddbf-ljhtd   1/1     Running     0          2m17s
    context-box-65484fbc88-w7xwk        1/1     Running     0          2m17s
    create-table-job-md8pm              0/1     Completed   1          2m17s
    dynamodb-6d65df988-98nkh            1/1     Running     0          2m17s
    kube-eleven-76b95985cb-rqtmj        1/1     Running     0          2m17s
    kuber-5dd64cd759-rqlkc              1/1     Running     0          2m17s
    make-bucket-job-jb6wg               0/1     Completed   0          2m17s
    minio-0                             1/1     Running     0          2m17s
    minio-1                             1/1     Running     0          2m17s
    minio-2                             1/1     Running     0          2m17s
    minio-3                             1/1     Running     0          2m17s
    mongodb-5574c9b7-hq8jh              1/1     Running     0          2m17s
    scheduler-8468dc885f-stqxn          1/1     Running     0          2m17s
    terraformer-7d75cf49fd-d4x4f        1/1     Running     0          2m17s

Step 2 - Create Genesis API Token

  1. Login to your Genesis Cloud Console to generate a new API token. For more information, you can follow this guide on creating an API Token.

  2. Create a Kubernetes Secret that will contain the genesis API Token.

    user@<your_host>:~# kubectl create secret generic genesiscloud-secret --namespace=claudie --from-literal=apitoken='YOUR_API_TOKEN'

Step 3 - Create a Claudie manifest file

Now, let's create a Claudie manifest file that describes the Kubernetes cluster you want to create on Genesis. You can use the example manifest below as a starting point. Note that the example provided in this article will use CPU Instances. For a GPU example with Nvidia Operator installation, refer to this guide. You can use the example manifest below as a starting point.

  • Create the file:

    user@<your_host>:~# nano inputmanifest.yml
  • Add your content:

    apiVersion: claudie.io/v1beta1
    kind: InputManifest
    metadata:
      name: kubernetes-genesis
    spec:
      providers:
          - name: genesiscloud
            providerType: genesiscloud
            secretRef:
              name: genesiscloud-secret
              namespace: claudie
      nodePools:
        dynamic:
          - name: control-gen
            providerSpec:
              name: genesiscloud
              region: ARC-IS-HAF-1
            count: 1
            serverType: vcpu-2_memory-4g_disk-80g
            image: "Ubuntu 22.04"
    
          - name: compute-gen
            providerSpec:
              name: genesiscloud
              region: ARC-IS-HAF-1
            count: 3
            serverType: vcpu-2_memory-4g_disk-80g
            image: "Ubuntu 22.04"
            storageDiskSize: 50
      kubernetes:
        clusters:
          - name: gen-cluster
            version: v1.27.1
            network: 172.16.2.0/24
            pools:
              control:
                - control-gen
              compute:
                - compute-gen

The above manifest file is used for defining a Kubernetes cluster. Let's break down some of the key fields in it:

  • spec.providers » Contains configurations for supported cloud providers. It is referencing access credentials that were previously created in a Secret object.
  • spec.nodePools.dynamic » Defines dynamic node pools. Those are the cloud provider's VMs that Claudie is expected to create.
  • spec.kubernetes.clusters » Describes the Kubernetes cluster that will be created.

The Provided example is relatively simple and deploys a Kubernetes cluster with one master node and three worker nodes. However, Claudie can be used for more advanced cluster scenarios, including deploying clusters across different cloud providers and on-premise in multi-cloud/hybrid architecture. Additionally, it's worth noting that the nodes will be connected using a WireGuard network, eliminating the need for a virtual network resource. For a more in-depth understanding of Claudie's inputmanifest definition, visit the documentation site. To see what are the instance types available for Genesis Cloud API, visit the developers site.

Step 4 - Deploy the cluster

Save the example above to an inputmanifest.yml file, and apply it to the kind cluster with the following command:

user@<your_host>:~# kubectl apply -f inputmanifest.yml
inputmanifest.claudie.io/kubernetes-genesis created

Now you can follow the cluster deployment status. When the cluster is deployed, the status will state DONE.

user@<your_host>:~# kubectl get inputmanifest
NAME                 STATUS
kubernetes-genesis   IN_PROGRESS

user@<your_host>:~# kubectl get inputmanifest
NAME                 STATUS
kubernetes-genesis   DONE

Step 5 - Access the cluster

The kubeconfig will be saved to a Secret object in the claudie namespace.

user@<your_host>:~# kubectl get secrets -A
NAMESPACE      NAME                                      TYPE                            DATA   AGE
cert-manager   cert-manager-webhook-ca                   Opaque                          3      103m
claudie        claudie-webhook-certificate               kubernetes.io/tls               3      100m
claudie        dynamo-secret-td2bt2f272                  Opaque                          2      101m
claudie        gene-cluster-<hash>-kubeconfig   	 Opaque                          1      12m
claudie        gen-cluster-<hash>-metadata     		 Opaque                          1      12m
claudie        minio-secret-5hd7htgm7m                   Opaque                          2      101m
claudie        mongo-secret-gfc6d84tcf                   Opaque                          2      101m
claudie        genesiscloud-secret                       Opaque                          1      82m
user@<your_host>:~# kubectl get secrets -n claudie -l claudie.io/output=kubeconfig,claudie.io/cluster=gen-cluster -ojsonpath={.items[0].data.kubeconfig} | base64 -d
apiVersion: v1
clusters:
- cluster:
    certificate-authority-data: <your_data>
    server: https://<KUBE_API_ADDRESS>:6443
  name: genesiscloud-cluster
contexts:
- context:
    cluster: genesiscloud-cluster
    user: kubernetes-admin
  name: kubernetes-admin@genesiscloud-cluster
current-context: kubernetes-admin@genesiscloud-cluster
kind: Config
preferences: {}
users:
- name: kubernetes-admin
  user:
    client-certificate-data: <your_data>
    client-key-data: <your_data>

Confirm that the cluster is up and running:

user@<your_host>:~# kubectl get secrets -n claudie -l claudie.io/output=kubeconfig,claudie.io/cluster=gen-cluster -ojsonpath={.items[0].data.kubeconfig} | base64 -d > ~/.kube/genesis
user@<your_host>:~# export KUBECONFIG=~/.kube/genesis
user@<your_host>:~# kubectl get nodes
NAME                             STATUS   ROLES    AGE   VERSION
compute-genesiscloud-rtx1uhe-1   Ready    <none>   19m   v1.24.0
compute-genesiscloud-rtx1uhe-2   Ready    <none>   19m   v1.24.0
compute-genesiscloud-rtx1uhe-3   Ready    <none>   19m   v1.24.0
control-genesiscloud-ccdwax4-1   Ready    <none>   20m   v1.24.0

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we walked through the process of deploying a Kubernetes cluster on Genesis Cloud using Claudie. We began by setting up Claudie in a local kind cluster, created a Genesis API Token for authentication, and defined a Claudie manifest file. After applying the manifest, we successfully created a Kubernetes cluster on Genesis Cloud.

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