Install on Azure

Prepare for and install Konvoy on Azure

This section describes how to prepare your environment and install Konvoy on Azure. It relates to deploying the entire Kubernetes cluster onto Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). You can also manage Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) through D2iQ Kommander.

For a demo of installing Konvoy on Azure, see this video:

Before you begin

The following setup and configuration requires:

Log in to your Azure account with the following command:

az login

This opens a browser window requesting your credentials. After supplying your credentials, the command line displays some of your account information (including your accessible subscriptions).

You have logged in. Now let us find all the subscriptions to which you have access...
{
  "cloudName": "AzureCloud",
  "homeTenantId": "XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXX1",
  "id": "XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXX2",
  "isDefault": true,
  "managedByTenants": [],
  "name": "Konvoy Developer Subscription",
  "state": "Enabled",
  "tenantId": "XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXX1",
  "user": {
    "name": "user@company.onmicrosoft.com",
    "type": "user"
  }
}

If your account has access to many subscriptions, select a subscription to use. Enter the following command. It requires your subscription name. This is found in the output of the az login command.

az account set --subscription "Your Subscription Label"

For your Azure account, you must have the roles of Contributor and User Access Administrator to create and assign roles to a user. To do this, you or your Azure Administrator must run the following command:

az role assignment create --assignee YOUR_USER_LOGIN --role "User Access Administrator"

You can confirm your own roles with following command:

az role assignment list --assignee YOUR_USER_LOGIN | grep roleDefinitionName

Ensure the command displays the following:

"roleDefinitionName": "User Access Administrator"
"roleDefinitionName": "Contributor"

Prepare the cluster configurations

After verifying your prerequisites, enter the following command to create all the default configuration files to launch an Azure Kubernetes cluster. This current directory where you create your configuration files and cluster is the directory where you run the Konvoy commands for future administration.

konvoy init --provisioner=azure

The output should look like this:

Created configuration file successfully!

If you do not want to have the cluster name generated based on the working directory, you can run the following command to customize the cluster name:

konvoy up --provisioner azure --cluster-name <YOUR_SPECIFIED_NAME>

NOTE: The cluster name can use the following characters: a-z, 0-9, . - and _.

The current directory now has two certificate files (.pub and .pem) used in the provisioning of the cluster. It also has a file named cluster.yaml which has all the default configurations for building a Konvoy cluster on Azure.

Here is a summary of the default cluster deployment:

NOTE: Refer to the cluster.yaml reference documentation if you would like to customize your installation.

  • Provisions three Standard_D4S_v3 virtual machines as Kubernetes master nodes
  • Provisions six Standard_D8S_v3 virtual machines as Kubernetes worker nodes
  • Deploys a Kubernetes cluster with an auto generated name
  • Deploys all the following default addons:
    • dashboard
    • konvoyconfig
    • reloader
    • azurediskprovisioner
    • azuredisk-csi-driver
    • cert-manager
    • opsportal
    • gatekeeper
    • defaultstorageclass-protection
    • traefik
    • prometheus
    • prometheusadapter
    • dex
    • elasticsearch
    • elasticsearch-curator
    • elasticsearchexporter
    • fluentbit
    • velero
    • dex-k8s-authenticator
    • traefik-forward-auth
    • kube-oidc-proxy
    • kommander
    • kibana

Enter the following command to list all the Azure infrastructure (VMs, networking, etc.) being provisioned:

konvoy provision --plan-only

NOTE: You can run this command before the initial provisioning or at any point after making modifications to the cluster.yaml file.

Add custom cloud.conf file

Konvoy generates a default cloud.conf file based on the provisioned infrastructure. If your cluster requires more configuration, you can specify it by creating a extras/cloud-provider/cloud.conf file in your working directory. Konvoy then copies this file to the remote machines and configures the necessary Kubernetes components to use this configuration file.

You can also configure Konvoy to use the files already present on the Kubernetes machines. On the remote machines, create /root/kubernetes/cloud.conf files and Konvoy configures the necessarily Kubernetes components to use this configuration file.

If both files exist, Konvoy uses the remote /root/kubernetes/cloud.conf file.

Install the cluster

To install the cluster, ensure the correct directory with the certificates and cluster.yaml file is available, and run the following command:

konvoy up -y

This starts the creation of the Azure VM instances and environment. This installs Kubernetes and all the addons specified in the cluster.yaml file. With the default configuration, it should take about 30 minutes for the Konvoy cluster to provision.

When the deployment completes, you should see output like the following:

Kubernetes cluster and addons deployed successfully!

Run `konvoy apply kubeconfig` to update kubectl credentials.

Run `konvoy check` to verify that the cluster has reached a steady state and all deployments have finished.

Navigate to the URL below to access various services running in the cluster.
  https://52.137.106.92/ops/landing
And login using the credentials below.
  Username: AUTO_GENERATED_USERNAME
  Password: SOME_AUTO_GENERATED_PASSWORD_12345

If the cluster was recently created, the dashboard and services may take a few minutes to be accessible.

Install Errors: If an error occurs it may be a race condition. You can run the up process again to pick up where you left off:

konvoy up -y

Enter the following command to verify all the Konvoy components installed and are running correctly:

konvoy check

Connect to your Konvoy operations portal

You can use the user interface to monitor and operate your cluster through the Operations Portal. The URL, username, and password information is in the output from the konvoy up command. If you need to access this information again, you can run the following command:

konvoy get ops-portal

The output should contain this information.

  https://52.137.106.92/ops/landing
And login using the credentials below.
  Username: AUTO_GENERATED_USERNAME
  Password: SOME_AUTO_GENERATED_PASSWORD_12345

Use your browser to connect to the portal using the username and password.

Connect directly to your Kubernetes cluster from the command line using kubectl

To connect directly to the newly provisioned Kubernetes cluster using the native Kubernetes CLI (kubectl), you need to add the cluster connection information to kubctl’s configuration file (~./kube/config). Enter the following command:

konvoy apply kubeconfig

When this command completes, you can run any kubectl command connecting directly to the Kubernetes cluster. To test, you can enter the following command:

kubectl get nodes

This should return the list of nodes making up your new Kubernetes cluster.

Deprovision the cluster

To uninstall Konvoy and destroy all the artifacts created in Azure by the deployment, enter the following command:

konvoy down -y

Cluster administration directory

As mentioned in the Preparing the Cluster Configurations section, the directory where you ran konvoy up is the directory you use to run additional konvoy CLI commands. The konvoy CLI administers the cluster (upgrade, deprovision, scale, change configs, install Addons, etc.). This directory is important because it now has the following generated files:

For a full list of attributed 3rd party software, see D2IQ Legal.

Advanced provisioning options (Azure)

Configure advanced provisioning options for installing Konvoy on Azure…Read More