Whack-a-pod

This is a demo that can be used to show how resilient services running on Kubernetes can be. Main app shows a giant sign that flashes in various random colors. Those colors come a Kubernetes powered microservice. If the service goes down, the sign turns red. Your goal is to try and knock the service down by killing the Kubernetes pods that run the service. You can do that by whacking the pods wich are respresented as moles.

There is also a less busy verison of the game available at /next.html. This version has an advanced mode that allows someone to do a more visual explanation of the mechanics.

The advanced version allows you to track the pod that is serving the color service and to simulate creating and destroying nodes.

Getting Started

The current directions assume you are using Google Cloud Platform to take advantage of Container Engine to build a manage your Kubernetes cluster. There is nothing preventing this app from running on a Kubernetes cluster hosted elsewhere, but the directions for setup assume Container Engine. If there is significant interest in these directions, I'll be happy to publish them (or better yet, accept a pull request.)

Create and configure GCP project

1. Create Project in Cloud Console
2. Navigate to Compute Engine (to activate Compute Engine service)
3. Navigate to the API Library and activate Container Builder API

Create Configs

1. Make a copy of /Samples.properties, renamed to /Makefile.properties
2. Alter value for PROJECT to your project id
3. Alter ZONE and REGION if you want to run this demo in a particular area.
4. Alter CLUSTER if you want to call your cluster something other than whack-a-pod.
5. Set INGRESSNAME if you need to use something other than the default.
6. Set DOCKERREPO if you need to use something other Google Container Registry.
7. Open a terminal in /.
8. Run make config to create your ingress file.
9. This should create the following file:
   1. /apps/ingress/ingress.yaml

I use this application to show off Google Cloud Platform, so I tend set it up multiple times, once per region or datacenter. Therefore, I rename the INGRESSNAME and CLUSTER a bunch. If you only have one cluster, you don't have to fiddle with these.

Build Infrastructure

1. Open a terminal in /infrastructure/.
2. Run make build. make build will do the following:
   1. Create Kubernetes Cluster
   2. Create 1 static ip addresse for use in the app

If you get the error ResponseError: code=503, message=Project projectname is not fully initialized with the default service accounts. Please try again later. You need to navigfate to Compute Engine in Google Cloud console to activate Compute Engine service.

Build Application

1. Open a terminal in root of whack_a_pod location.
2. Run make build
3. Run make deploy
4. When process finishes Browse to the the IP address value for the ingress.
5. To get that address: gcloud compute addresses describe #INGRESSNAME# --global

Run demo

There are two skins to the game.

1. Carnival version:
   • http://[gamehost]/
2. Google Cloud Next branded version:
   • http://[gamehost]/next.html
   • http://[gamehost]/advanced.html

The advanced version of the game is a great demo for teaching some of the fundamentals of Kubernetes. It allows you to cordon and uncordon nodes of the Kubernetes cluster to simulate Node failure. In addition it shows which Pod of the Replica Set is actually answering calls for the service.

Clean Up

1. Open a terminal in /.
2. Run make clean
3. Open a terminal in /infrastructure/.
4. Run make clean

Minikube

Whack a Pod can run on Minikube. Its performance isn't stellar, but the game versions of it run just as well a it does on a flaky conference wifi.

Prerequisite

• Install minikube
  Directions
• Enable ingress
  minikube addons enable ingress
• Install xhyve driver (Mac OS])
  Directions

Docker Repository

You can use the Container Registry based commands in the Makefiles to build and host your Docker images.

1. Open a terminal in root of whack_a_pod location.
2. Run make build
3. Make images publicly available by following these directions

This still requires a Google Cloud Platform Project. If you would like to build them some other way, you can, nothing restricts you from doing so. Just make sure you set $(DOCKERREPO) to the right value in Makefile.properties.

Docker Repository with DockerHub

Alternatively, to host your images on DockerHub,

1. Create an account on DockerHub
2. Create an image repository on DockerHub
3. In the Makefile.properties, change the value of PROJECT so that it equals your image repository slug
4. In the Makefile.properties, change the value of DOCKERREPO so that it looks like yourusername/$(PROJECT)
5. Run make build.dockerhub

Your repository should have three new images with the tags:

• admin
• api
• game

For example, if your username is username and your repository name is wap, your images will be pushed to:

• username/wap:admin
• username/wap:api
• username/wap:game

Running on Minikube

1. Open a terminal in root of whack_a_pod location.
2. Run minikube start --vm-driver=xhyve
3. Run make deploy.minikube
4. Run minikube ip to get the IP address of the Minikube deployment.
5. Create an entry in /etc/hosts pointing IP address to minikube.wap.

Running on Minikube with DockerHub

1. Open a terminal in root of whack_a_pod location.
2. Run minikube start
3. Run make deploy.minikube.dockerhub
4. The last line of the previous command should contain an IP address beside a "minikube.wap" string
5. Run sudo vim /etc/hosts, append the last line to the /etc/hosts and save the file.
6. Wait for the ingress to obtain an IP address (run kubectl get ing --watch and wait till the ADDRESS column has a value)
7. Visit http://minikube.wap in the browser

Clean Minikube

1. Run make clean.minikube
2. Run minikube stop

Running on any Kubernetes (generic)

This method is for generic usage and can be run on any Kubernetes installation. There are few differences:

• It will push built images to repo DOCKERREPO defined in Makefile.properties
• It's agnostic of any loadbalancer in front of ingress so you can use NodePort type for ingress service
• It works with RBAC model - proper serviceaccount and role bindings are created
• It will deploy all objects in current namespace

1. Open a terminal in root of whack_a_pod location.
2. Build application with make build.generic OR skip building by setting DOCKERREPO to cloudowski and use prebuilt images availabe on dockerhub
3. Run make deploy.generic
4. Define name whackapod.example.com in your /etc/hosts pointing to IP address of your load balancer in front of ingress controller or one of nodes IP (when using NodePort)
5. Open your browser at http://whackapod.example.com/

Clean generic deployment

1. Run make clean.generic

Architecture

There are three Kubernetes services that make up the whole application:

1. Game Game contains all of the front end clients for the game, both the carnival version and the Google Cloud Next version.
2. Admin Admin contains all of the logic for managing the whole application. This is the application the front end calls to get a list of the pods running the color api, it also has calls to create and delete deployments, delete pods, and drain and uncordon nodes.
3. Api Api contains two service calls: color and color-complete. Color is a random hexidecimal RGB color value. Color-complete is the same as color, but also sends the pod name of the pod that answered the service call.

"This is not an official Google Project."