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Version: 1.11.0

Installing Epinio

Introduction​

Epinio is installed from a single Helm chart. This also installs Kubed, MinIO, Dex and a container registry in your Kubernetes cluster. You can disable the installation of these additional "sub" charts by changing the settings as described in their sections below.

Prerequisites​

See system requirements for dependencies your Kubernetes cluster requires for an Epinio installation.

Installation​

Ingress Controller​

During installation using helm Epinio creates some Ingress resources for its internal components. These components depend on a running ingress controller providing a default IngressClass.

You can install nginx-ingress-controller using the LoadBalancer service type:

helm repo add nginx-stable https://helm.nginx.com/stable
helm repo update
helm upgrade --install nginx-ingress --namespace nginx-ingress nginx-stable/nginx-ingress \
    --set controller.setAsDefaultIngress=true \
    --create-namespace

You can use Traefik instead of Nginx by following the official documentation.

tip

You should verify if the service of the ingress controller you have just deployed has at least one EXTERNAL-IP address assigned from the external load-balancer provider (such as AWS ELB or similar).

How to verify your `EXTERNAL-IP` address
kubectl get svc nginx-ingress-controller --namespace nginx-ingress
> NAME                       TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP
> nginx-ingress-controller   LoadBalancer   10.43.223.228   <pending>

If you have the <pending> value in the EXTERNAL-IP column you can try one of the following steps:

  • Enable the relevant cloud provider resources for your cluster
  • Install the MetalLB load balancer into your cluster
  • Append --set "controller.service.externalIPs={<node1-ip>,<node2-ip>}" to the helm upgrade --install command above, or perform kubectl edit service nginx-ingress-controller -n nginx-ingress and add:
    spec:
      externalIPs:
      - <node1-ip>
      - <node2-ip>

There is more about this in the NGINX documentation.

Cert Manager​

Epinio needs cert-manager to create TLS certificates for the various ingresses.

If you do not have cert-manager installed on the cluster, you can install it:

helm repo add jetstack https://charts.jetstack.io
helm repo update
helm upgrade --install cert-manager jetstack/cert-manager --namespace cert-manager  \
    --set installCRDs=true \
    --set extraArgs={--enable-certificate-owner-ref=true} \
    --create-namespace
caution

If cert-manager isn't installed in the namespace cert-manager, you have to set .Values.certManagerNamespace to the namespace it is installed in. Epinio installation will fail without this as it will not know how to use cert-manager.

Dynamic storage provisioner​

To support Epinio a storage provisioner is needed. You can use any storage provisioner which provides ReadWriteMany (RWX) Access Mode and a default StorageClass resource for dynamic storage provisioning.

To verify that your cluster provides a default StorageClass run the command kubectl get storageclass. The default StorageClass is marked with the string (default) next to its name in the output list.

For example, you can deploy and configure the local-path dynamic storage provisioner by:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rancher/local-path-provisioner/master/deploy/local-path-storage.yaml
kubectl patch storageclass local-path -p '{"metadata": {"annotations":{"storageclass.kubernetes.io/is-default-class":"true"}}}'

Install Epinio​

If the above dependencies are available or going to be installed by this chart, Epinio can be installed with the following:

helm repo add epinio https://epinio.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update
helm upgrade --install epinio epinio/epinio --namespace epinio --create-namespace \
    --set global.domain=myepiniodomain.org

Or you can install using "Let's Encrypt" certificates.

To generate trusted TLS certificates with "Let's Encrypt" for your public domain set .Values.global.tlsIssuer to letsencrypt-production and the value for the .Values.global.tlsIssuerEmail key to your e-mail address. Then:

helm repo add epinio https://epinio.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update
 helm upgrade --install epinio epinio/epinio --namespace epinio --create-namespace \
    --set global.domain=myepiniodomain.org \
    --set global.tlsIssuer=letsencrypt-production \
    --set global.tlsIssuerEmail=user@company.org

The only mandatory field is the .Values.global.domain which should have the value of a wildcard *. enabled domain. It should point to the IP address of your running Ingress controller.

tip

  • To use a non-default IngressClass you need to specify it using --set ingress.ingressClassName=<className>

  • If you receive Entity Too Large errors when uploading application source code into Epinio, you need to increase the proxy-body-size with --set 'ingress.annotations.nginx\.ingress\.kubernetes\.io/proxy-body-size=1000m'

note

  • Read more on how to setup DNS here: DNS setup

  • If you're deploying Epinio in a "localhost" environment, you can use a wildcard DNS service to ease setup.

  • If installation fails due to an expired certificate then run epinio settings update-ca. There is more information here.

Verify Helm Chart Images​

This is done using the cosign tool. The following commands were tested using cosign version 2.1.1.

The three core Epinio images are epinio-server, epinio-unpacker, and epinio-ui. The command to verify any of them is

cosign verify \
       --certificate-identity-regexp "https://github.com/epinio/epinio" \
       --certificate-oidc-issuer "https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com" \
       ghcr.io/epinio/<IMAGE>:v1.8.1

where <IMAGE> is the name of the image to verify.

Installation on Specific Kubernetes Offerings​

Installing Epinio, as described above, is a standard process, however you might need to configure it in a specific Kubernetes cluster.

To help you, see the following documents for some well-known clusters:

The Public Cloud installation describes the three major cloud providers but Epinio can run on any Kubernetes cluster.

Internal Epinio components​

Kubed​

Kubed is installed as a subchart when .Values.kubed.enabled is true (default). If you already have kubed, you can skip installation by setting the helm value .Values.kubed.enabled to false.

S3 storage​

Epinio uses an S3 compatible storage to store the application source code. This chart will install Minio when .Values.minio.enabled is true (default).

In addition to Minio, Epinio offers s3gw as another S3 compatible store. It is installed when .Values.minio.enabled is set to false and .Values.s3gw.enabled is set to true.

caution

The s3gw support is experimental. The s3gw chart is configured to use a host path volume for storage. This setup is risky, and not HA. If there is an outage of the node where s3gw's pod is currently deployed, k8s will fail trying to assign the volume on another node.

Both choices for internal S3 compatible storage can be configured to use a user-defined storageClass. If no StorageClass is defined, the default storageClass is used. When using Minio set the custom storageClass to the value of .Values.persistance.storageClass. When using s3gw set the custom storageClass to the value of .Values.s3gw.storageClass.name.

Use any external S3 compatible solution by setting .Values.minio.enabled to false (.Values.s3gw.enabled is false by default) and using the values under s3 to point to the required S3 server.

Dex​

Dex OpenID Connect Provider is installed as a subchart when .Values.global.dex.enabled is set to true (default).

If you don't need to use an identity provider, set the value to false and use only local Epinio users. OIDC Authentication has more information.

Container Registry​

When Epinio builds a container image for an application from source, it needs to store that image in a container registry. Epinio installs a container registry on the cluster when .Values.containerregistry.enabled is true (default).

Any container registry that supports basic auth authentication (e.g. gcr, dockerhub, etc) can be used instead, by setting this value to false and using the relevant global values to point to the desired container registry.