Forecastle

Problem(s)

• We would like to have a central place where we can easily look for and access our applications running on Kubernetes.
• We would like to have a tool which can dynamically discover and list the apps running on Kubernetes.
• A launchpad to access developer tools e.g. Jenkins, Nexus, Kibana, Grafana, etc.

Solution

Forecastle gives you access to a control panel where you can see your running applications and access them on Kubernetes.

Deploying to Kubernetes

You can deploy Forecastle both using vanilla k8s manifests or helm charts.

Vanilla Manifests

Step 1: You can apply vanilla manifests by running the following command

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stakater/Forecastle/master/deployments/kubernetes/forecastle.yaml

Step 2: Update configmap

In the Forecastle configmap modify the namespaceSelector key with a list of namespaces which you want Forecastle to watch. Refer to this for instructions.

And enjoy!

Helm Charts

If you configured helm on your cluster, you can deploy Forecastle via helm chart located under deployments/kubernetes/chart/Forecastle folder.

Configuration

Ingresses

Forecastle looks for a specific annotations on ingresses.

• Add the following annotations to your ingresses in order to be discovered by forecastle:

Forecastle

Forecastle supports the following configuration options that can be modified by either ConfigMap or values.yaml if you are using helm

NamespaceSelector

It is a selector for selecting namespaces either selecting all namespaces or a list of namespaces, or filtering namespaces through labels.

Note: If you specify both labelSelector and matchNames, forecastle will take a union of all namespaces matched and use them.

Custom Apps

If you want to add any apps that are not exposed through ingresses or are external to the cluster, you can use the custom apps feature. You can pass an array of custom apps inside the config.

ForecastleApp CRD

You can now create custom resources to add apps to forecastle dynamically. This decouples the application configuration from Ingresses as well as forecastle config. You can create the custom resource ForecastleApp like the following:

apiVersion: forecastle.stakater.com/v1alpha1
kind: ForecastleApp
metadata:
  name: app-name
spec:
  name: My Awesome App
  group: dev
  icon: https://icon-url
  url: http://app-url
  networkRestricted: "false"
  properties:
    Version: 1.0
  instance: "" # Optional

Automatically discover URL's from Kubernetes Resources

Forecastle supports discovering URL's ForecastleApp CRD from the following resources:

• Ingress

The above type of resource that you want to discover URL from MUST exist in the same namespace as ForecastleApp CR. Then you can add the following to the CR:

apiVersion: forecastle.stakater.com/v1alpha1
kind: ForecastleApp
metadata:
  name: app-name
spec:
  name: My Awesome App
  group: dev
  icon: https://icon-url
  urlFrom: # This is new
    ingressRef:
      name: my-app-ingress

The above CR will be picked up by forecastle and it will generate the App in the UI. This lets you bundle this custom resource with the app's helm chart which will make it a part of the deployment process.

Note: You have to enable CRD feature first if you have disabled it. You can do that by applying the CRD and specifying crdEnabled: true in forecastle config. If you're using the helm chart then CRDs are installed with the chart.

Example Config

An example of a config can be seen below

namespaceSelector:
  labelSelector:
    matchLabels:
      component: redis
    matchExpressions:
      - {key: tier, operator: In, values: [cache]}
  matchNames:
  - test
title:
headerBackground:
headerForeground: "#ffffff"
instanceName: "Hello"
crdEnabled: false
customApps:
- name: Hello
  icon: http://hello
  url: http://helloicon
  group: Test
  properties:
    Version: 1.0

Features

• List apps found in all namespaces listed in the configmap
• Search apps
• Grouped apps per namespace
• Configurable header (Title and colors)
• Multiple instance support
• Provide Custom apps
• CRD ForecastleApp for adding custom apps
• Custom groups and URLs for the apps
• Details per app

Running multiple instances of forecastle

You can run multiple instances of forecastle by just deploying them in a different namespace and provided a list of namespaces to look for ingresses.

However, if you want flexibility over which applications to show in a specific instance regardless of the namespace, then you need to first configure forecastle instances to be a named instances. You can do that by setting instanceName in forecastle configuration.

Once you have the named instances, you can add forecastle.stakater.com/instance annotation to your ingresses to control which application will show in which instance of forecastle.

You can also specify multiple instances of forecastle for the same ingress so that it shows up in multiple dashboards. For example, you have 2 instances running named dev-dashboard and prod-dashboard. You can add this in the ingress's instance annotation dev-dashboard,prod-dashboard and the ingress will come up in both dashboards.

When using Helm make sure you set a unique nameOverride (default forecastle) in the values to prevent conflicts between global resources (ClusterRole & ClusterRoleBinding).

Help

Got a question? File a GitHub issue.

Talk to us on Slack

Join and talk to us on the #tools-imc channel for discussing Forecastle

Contributing

Bug Reports & Feature Requests

Please use the issue tracker to report any bugs or file feature requests.

Developing

PRs are welcome. In general, we follow the "fork-and-pull" Git workflow.

1. Fork the repo on GitHub
2. Clone the project to your own machine
3. Commit changes to your own branch
4. Push your work back up to your fork
5. Submit a Pull request so that we can review your changes

NOTE: Be sure to merge the latest from "upstream" before making a pull request!

Changelog

View our closed Pull Requests.

License

Apache2 © Stakater

About

Why name Forecastle

Forecastle is the section of the upper deck of a ship located at the bow forward of the foremast. This Forecastle will act as a control panel and show all your running applications on Kubernetes having a particular annotation.

Forecastle is maintained by Stakater. Like it? Please let us know at [email protected]

See our other projects or contact us in case of professional services and queries on [email protected]