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Get started with Flux v2

Prerequisites

You will need two Kubernetes clusters version 1.16 or newer and kubectl version 1.18. For a quick local test, you can use Kubernetes kind. Any other Kubernetes setup will work as well though.

In order to follow the guide you'll need a GitHub account and a personal access token that can create repositories (check all permissions under repo).

Export your GitHub personal access token and username:

export GITHUB_TOKEN=<your-token>
export GITHUB_USER=<your-username>

Install the Flux CLI

To install the latest flux release on MacOS and Linux using Homebrew run:

brew install fluxcd/tap/flux

Or install flux by downloading precompiled binaries using a Bash script:

curl -s https://toolkit.fluxcd.io/install.sh | sudo bash

The install script downloads the flux binary to /usr/local/bin.

Binaries for macOS, Windows and Linux AMD64/ARM are available for download on the release page.

To configure your shell to load flux completions add to your Bash profile:

# ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile
. <(flux completion bash)

zsh, fish, and powershell are also supported with their own sub-commands.

GitOps workflow

You'll be using a dedicated Git repository e.g. fleet-infra to manage one or more Kubernetes clusters. This guide assumes that you have two clusters, one for staging and one for production.

Using the Flux CLI you'll do the following:

configure each cluster to synchronise with a directory inside the fleet repository
register app sources (git repositories) that contain plain Kubernetes manifests or Kustomize overlays
configure app deployments on both clusters (pre-releases on staging, semver releases on production)

Staging bootstrap

Create the staging cluster using Kubernetes kind or set the kubectl context to an existing cluster:

kind create cluster --name staging
kubectl cluster-info --context kind-staging

Verify that your staging cluster satisfies the prerequisites with:

$ flux check --pre
► checking prerequisites
✔ kubectl 1.18.3 >=1.18.0
✔ kubernetes 1.18.2 >=1.16.0
✔ prerequisites checks passed

Run the bootstrap command:

flux bootstrap github \
  --owner=$GITHUB_USER \
  --repository=fleet-infra \
  --branch=main \
  --path=staging-cluster \
  --personal

!!! hint "ARM" When deploying to a Kubernetes cluster with ARM architecture, you can use --arch=arm for ARMv7 32-bit container images and --arch=arm64 for ARMv8 64-bit container images.

The bootstrap command creates a repository if one doesn't exist, and commits the manifests for the Flux components to the default branch at the specified path. Then it configures the target cluster to synchronize with the specified path inside the repository.

If you wish to create the repository under a GitHub organization:

flux bootstrap github \
  --owner=<organization> \
  --repository=<repo-name> \
  --branch=<organization default branch> \
  --team=<team1-slug> \
  --team=<team2-slug> \
  --path=staging-cluster

Example output:

$ flux bootstrap github --owner=gitopsrun --repository=fleet-infra --path=staging-cluster --team=devs
► connecting to github.com
✔ repository created
✔ devs team access granted
✔ repository cloned
✚ generating manifests
✔ components manifests pushed
► installing components in flux-system namespace
deployment "source-controller" successfully rolled out
deployment "kustomize-controller" successfully rolled out
deployment "helm-controller" successfully rolled out
deployment "notification-controller" successfully rolled out
✔ install completed
► configuring deploy key
✔ deploy key configured
► generating sync manifests
✔ sync manifests pushed
► applying sync manifests
◎ waiting for cluster sync
✔ bootstrap finished

If you prefer GitLab, export GITLAB_TOKEN env var and use the command flux bootstrap gitlab.

!!! hint "Idempotency" It is safe to run the bootstrap command as many times as you want. If the Flux components are present on the cluster, the bootstrap command will perform an upgrade if needed. You can target a specific Flux version with flux bootstrap --version=<semver>.

Staging workflow

Clone the repository with:

git clone https://github.com/$GITHUB_USER/fleet-infra
cd fleet-infra

Create a git source pointing to a public repository master branch:

flux create source git webapp \
  --url=https://github.com/stefanprodan/podinfo \
  --branch=master \
  --interval=30s \
  --export > ./staging-cluster/webapp-source.yaml

Create a kustomization for synchronizing the common manifests on the cluster:

flux create kustomization webapp-common \
  --source=webapp \
  --path="./deploy/webapp/common" \
  --prune=true \
  --validation=client \
  --interval=1h \
  --export > ./staging-cluster/webapp-common.yaml

Create a kustomization for the backend service that depends on common:

flux create kustomization webapp-backend \
  --depends-on=webapp-common \
  --source=webapp \
  --path="./deploy/webapp/backend" \
  --prune=true \
  --validation=client \
  --interval=10m \
  --health-check="Deployment/backend.webapp" \
  --health-check-timeout=2m \
  --export > ./staging-cluster/webapp-backend.yaml

Create a kustomization for the frontend service that depends on backend:

flux create kustomization webapp-frontend \
  --depends-on=webapp-backend \
  --source=webapp \
  --path="./deploy/webapp/frontend" \
  --prune=true \
  --validation=client \
  --interval=10m \
  --health-check="Deployment/frontend.webapp" \
  --health-check-timeout=2m \
  --export > ./staging-cluster/webapp-frontend.yaml

Push changes to origin:

git add -A && git commit -m "add staging webapp" && git push

In about 30s the synchronization should start:

$ watch flux get kustomizations
NAME            READY   MESSAGE
flux-system     True    Applied revision: main/6eea299fe9997c8561b826b67950afaf9a476cf8
webapp-backend  False   dependency 'flux-system/webapp-common' is not ready
webapp-common   True    Applied revision: master/7411da595c25183daba255068814b83843fe3395
webapp-frontend False   dependency 'flux-system/webapp-backend' is not ready

When the synchronization finishes you can check that the webapp services are running:

$ kubectl -n webapp get deployments,services
NAME                       READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.apps/backend    1/1     1            1           4m1s
deployment.apps/frontend   1/1     1            1           3m31s

NAME               TYPE        CLUSTER-IP    EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)             AGE
service/backend    ClusterIP   10.52.10.22   <none>        9898/TCP,9999/TCP   4m1s
service/frontend   ClusterIP   10.52.9.85    <none>        80/TCP              3m31s

!!! tip From this moment forward, any changes made to the webapp Kubernetes manifests in the master branch will be synchronised with the staging cluster.

If a Kubernetes manifest is removed from the webapp repository, the reconciler will remove it from your cluster. If you delete a kustomization from the fleet-infra repo, the reconciler will remove all Kubernetes objects that were previously applied from that kustomization.

If you alter the webapp deployment using kubectl edit, the changes will be reverted to match the state described in git. When dealing with an incident, you can pause the reconciliation of a kustomization with flux suspend kustomization <name>. Once the debugging session is over, you can re-enable the reconciliation with flux resume kustomization <name>.

Production bootstrap

On production clusters, you may wish to deploy stable releases of an application. When creating a git source instead of a branch, you can specify a git tag or a semver expression.

Create the production cluster using Kubernetes kind or set the kubectl context to an existing cluster:

kind create cluster --name production
kubectl cluster-info --context kind-production

Run the bootstrap for the production environment:

flux bootstrap github \
  --owner=$GITHUB_USER \
  --repository=fleet-infra \
  --path=prod-cluster \
  --personal

Pull the changes locally:

git pull

Production workflow

Create a git source using a semver range to target stable releases:

flux create source git webapp \
  --url=https://github.com/stefanprodan/podinfo \
  --tag-semver=">=4.0.0 <4.0.2" \
  --interval=30s \
  --export > ./prod-cluster/webapp-source.yaml

Create a kustomization for webapp pointing to the production overlay:

flux create kustomization webapp \
  --source=webapp \
  --path="./deploy/overlays/production" \
  --prune=true \
  --validation=client \
  --interval=10m \
  --health-check="Deployment/frontend.production" \
  --health-check="Deployment/backend.production" \
  --health-check-timeout=2m \
  --export > ./prod-cluster/webapp-production.yaml

Push changes to origin:

git add -A && git commit -m "add prod webapp" && git push

List git sources:

$ flux get sources git
NAME            REVISION                                        READY   MESSAGE
flux-system     main/5ae055e24b2c8a78f981708b61507a97a30bd7a6   True    Fetched revision: main/113360052b3153e439a0cf8de76b8e3d2a7bdf27
webapp          4.0.1/113360052b3153e439a0cf8de76b8e3d2a7bdf27  True    Fetched revision: 4.0.1/113360052b3153e439a0cf8de76b8e3d2a7bdf27

The kubectl equivalent is kubectl -n flux-system get gitrepositories.

List kustomization:

$ flux get kustomizations
NAME            REVISION                                        SUSPENDED       READY   MESSAGE
flux-system     main/5ae055e24b2c8a78f981708b61507a97a30bd7a6   False           True    Applied revision: main/5ae055e24b2c8a78f981708b61507a97a30bd7a6
webapp          4.0.1/113360052b3153e439a0cf8de76b8e3d2a7bdf27  False           True    Applied revision: 4.0.1/113360052b3153e439a0cf8de76b8e3d2a7bdf27

The kubectl equivalent is kubectl -n flux-system get kustomizations.

If you want to upgrade to the latest 4.x version, you can change the semver expression to:

flux create source git webapp \
  --url=https://github.com/stefanprodan/podinfo \
  --tag-semver=">=4.0.0 <5.0.0" \
  --interval=30s \
  --export > ./prod-cluster/webapp-source.yaml

git add -A && git commit -m "update prod webapp" && git push

Trigger a git sync:

$ flux reconcile ks flux-system --with-source 
► annotating source flux-system
✔ source annotated
◎ waiting for reconcilitation
✔ git reconciliation completed
✔ fetched revision main/d751ea264d48bf0db8b588d1d08184834ac8fec9
◎ waiting for kustomization reconcilitation
✔ kustomization reconcilitation completed
✔ applied revision main/d751ea264d48bf0db8b588d1d08184834ac8fec9

The kubectl equivalent is kubectl -n flux-system annotate gitrepository/flux-system fluxcd.io/reconcileAt="$(date +%s)".

Wait for the webapp to be upgraded:

$ watch flux get kustomizations
NAME            REVISION                                        SUSPENDED       READY   MESSAGE
flux-system     main/d751ea264d48bf0db8b588d1d08184834ac8fec9   False           True    Applied revision: main/d751ea264d48bf0db8b588d1d08184834ac8fec9
webapp          4.0.6/26a630c0b4b3452833d96c511d93f6f2d2e90a99  False           True    Applied revision: 4.0.6/26a630c0b4b3452833d96c511d93f6f2d2e90a99

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