OpenWhisk Deployment on Kubernetes

This repository can be used to deploy OpenWhisk to a Kubernetes cluster.

Table of Contents

• Setting up Kubernetes and Helm
• Deploying OpenWhisk
• Deploying OpenWhisk Providers
• Cleanup
• Issues

Setting up Kubernetes and Helm

Kubernetes

Requirements

Several requirements must be met for OpenWhisk to deploy on Kubernetes.

• Kubernetes version 1.8+. However, multiple minor releases of Kubernetes, including 1.8.9 and 1.9.4 will not work for OpenWhisk due to bugs with volume mount subpaths (see[kubernetes-61076]). This bug will surface as a failure when deploying the nginx container.
• The ability to create Ingresses to make a Kubernetes service available outside of the cluster so you can actually use OpenWhisk.
• If you enable persistence (see docs/configurationChoices.md), either your cluster is configured to support Dynamic Volume Provision or you must manually create any necessary PersistentVolumes when deploying the Helm chart.
• Endpoints of Kubernetes services must be able to loopback to themselves (the kubelet's hairpin-mode must not be none).

Using Minikube

For local development and testing, we recommend using Minikube with the docker network in promiscuous mode. Not all combinations of Minikube and Kubernetes versions will work for running OpenWhisk. Although other combinations may work, we recommend at least initially using a combination from the table below that is verified by our Travis CI testing.

Kubernetes Version	Minikube Version
1.8.0	0.25.2
1.9.0	0.25.2

For details on setting up Minikube, see these instructions.

Using a Kubernetes cluster from a cloud provider

You can also provision a Kubernetes cluster from a cloud provider, subject to the cluster meeting the requirements above.

Helm

Helm is a tool to simplify the deployment and management of applications on Kubernetes clusters. Helm consists of the helm command line tool that you install on your development machine and the tiller runtime that you install on your Kubernetes cluster.

For detailed instructions on installing Helm, see these instructions.

In short if you already have the helm cli installed on your development machine, you will need to execute these two commands and wait a few seconds for the tiller-deploy pod to be in the Running state.

helm init
kubectl create clusterrolebinding tiller-cluster-admin --clusterrole=cluster-admin --serviceaccount=kube-system:default

Deploying OpenWhisk

Overview

You will use Helm to deploy OpenWhisk to your Kubernetes cluster. There are four deployment steps that are described in more detail below in the rest of this section.

1. Initial cluster setup. You will create a Kubernetes namespace into which to deploy OpenWhisk and label the Kubernetes worker nodes to be used to execute user actions.
2. Customize the deployment. You will create a mycluster.yaml that specifies key facts about your Kubernetes cluster and the OpenWhisk configuration you wish to deploy.
3. Deploy OpenWhisk with Helm. You will use Helm and mycluster.yaml to deploy OpenWhisk to your Kubernetes cluster.
4. Configure the wsk CLI. You need to tell the wsk CLI how to connect to your OpenWhisk deployment.

Initial setup

1. Resources in Kubernetes are organized into namespaces. You can use any name for the namespace you want, but we suggest using openwhisk. Create one by issuing the command:

kubectl create namespace openwhisk

2. Identify the Kubernetes worker nodes that should be used to execute user containers. Do this by labeling each node with openwhisk-role=invoker. For a single node cluster, simply do

kubectl label nodes --all openwhisk-role=invoker

If you have a multi-node cluster, for each node <INVOKER_NODE_NAME> you want to be an invoker, execute

$ kubectl label nodes <INVOKER_NODE_NAME> openwhisk-role=invoker

Customize the Deployment

You will need to create a mycluster.yaml file that records how the OpenWhisk deployment on your cluster will be accessed by clients. See the ingress discussion for details. Below is a sample file appropriate for a Minikube cluster where minikube ip returns 192.168.99.100 and port 31001 is available to be used.

whisk:
  ingress:
    type: NodePort
    api_host_name: 192.168.99.100
    api_host_port: 31001

nginx:
  httpsNodePort: 31001

Beyond specifying the ingress, the mycluster.yaml file is also used to customize your OpenWhisk deployment by enabling optional features and controlling the replication factor of the various micro-services that make up the OpenWhisk implementation. See the configuration choices documentation for a discussion of the primary options.

Deploy With Helm

Deployment can be done by using the following single command:

helm install ./helm/openwhisk --namespace=openwhisk --name=owdev -f mycluster.yaml

For simplicity, in this README, we have used owdev as the release name. You can use a different name, or not specify a name at all and let Helm auto-generate one for you.

You can use the command helm status owdev to get a summary of the various Kubernetes artifacts that make up your OpenWhisk deployment. Once all the pods shown by the status command are in either the Running or Completed state, your OpenWhisk deployment is ready to be used.

Configure the wsk CLI

Configure the OpenWhisk CLI, wsk, by setting the auth and apihost properties (if you don't already have the wsk cli, follow the instructions here to get it). Replace whisk.ingress.api_host_name and whisk.ingress.api_host_port with the actual values from your mycluster.yaml.

wsk property set --apihost whisk.ingress.api_host_name:whisk.ingress.api_host_port
wsk property set --auth 23bc46b1-71f6-4ed5-8c54-816aa4f8c502:123zO3xZCLrMN6v2BKK1dXYFpXlPkccOFqm12CdAsMgRU4VrNZ9lyGVCGuMDGIwP

Verify your OpenWhisk Deployment

Your OpenWhisk installation should now be usable. You can test it by following these instructions to define and invoke a sample OpenWhisk action in your favorite programming language.

Note: if you installed self-signed certificates, which is the default for the OpenWhisk Helm chart, you will need to use wsk -i to suppress certificate checking. This works around cannot validate certificate errors from the wsk CLI.

If your deployment is not working, check our troubleshooting guide for ideas.

Deploying OpenWhisk Providers

Now that you have a working OpenWhisk installation, you may optionally deploy additional packages and event providers. A standard set of event providers is available as a collection of Helm charts in the helm/providers directory. You may install all the providers in a single command with

helm install ./helm/providers --namespace=openwhisk --name=owdev-providers

or you may selectively install the charts for individual providers with commands like

helm install ./helm/providers/charts/kafka --namespace=openwhisk --name=owdev-kafka-provider

Please see the values.yaml file and/or README.md in the individual charts for instructions on enabling any optional customizations of the providers.

Cleanup

Use the following command to remove all the deployed OpenWhisk components:

helm delete owdev

Helm does keep a history of previous deployments. If you want to completely remove the deployment from helm, for example so you can reuse owdev to deploy OpenWhisk again, use the command:

helm delete owdev --purge

Issues

If your OpenWhisk deployment is not working, check our troubleshooting guide for ideas.

Report bugs, ask questions and request features here on GitHub.

You can also join our slack channel and chat with developers. To get access to our slack channel, request an invite here.

Disclaimer

Apache OpenWhisk Deployment on Kubernetes is an effort undergoing incubation at The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), sponsored by the Apache Incubator. Incubation is required of all newly accepted projects until a further review indicates that the infrastructure, communications, and decision making process have stabilized in a manner consistent with other successful ASF projects. While incubation status is not necessarily a reflection of the completeness or stability of the code, it does indicate that the project has yet to be fully endorsed by the ASF.