We have continued automating Kubernetes cluster setups, worked on making a Kubernetes-based alternative to some applications we use internally and almost 20 people have filled in our survey!
Kubernetes cluster setup
We have written some scripts to automate setting up single-node Kubernetes Clusters. These scripts also double as a way for us to document how the clusters are set up. Although far from perfect, we will make these openly available soon. That way, we are able to share what we are doing with people who are doing similar projects.
We have set up Keycloak and linked it to Greenhost’s LDAP, so we can sign into applications using OpenID/OAuth or SAML. Partly we have done this because it was the easiest way to give our colleagues access to the applications in our cluster and partly it is a test for the transfer process that future users of OpenAppStack might go through. In the future we will install some other applications so our colleagues can test the applications we use for OpenAppStack.
Cluster storage
Furthermore, we have put some research into storage solutions. There are several storage drivers for Kubernetes, but a lot of them are expensive, vendor-locked at companies like Google or Amazon, and often both.
We have spent some time looking for a light-weight solution that is still OK for use in production. We had a prototype working that automatically creates RBD images for PersistentVolumeClaims on our Ceph cluster. We plan to research this more thoroughly. If you are reading this and have experience with small scale persistent storage for VPS-based Kubernetes clusters, please contact me 🙂
Cloud application survey
Furthermore almost 20 of you have done our survey on cloud applications! Thanks a lot for that, because this is what will help us decide which applications need to be part of OpenAppStack. The results will be in next month’s results and will become available on the website.
User dashboard
Lastly, we have been investigating a dashboard for installing applications. We might be able to offer “KubeApps” in order to make it easier for OAS users to manage the applications that are running on their cluster. We hope that by using Keycloak (or Gluu, or any different existing SSO solution) in combination with KubeApps, we can postpone or prevent programming any user interfaces ourselves.
Next steps
This month the OpenAppStack team will set up a production-aimed Kubernetes cluster. We hope to learn a lot from that experience. Furthermore, we will process the survey results and continue our research into persistent storage.