Containerization using Docker containers is designed to run servers on physical as well as virtual machines, cloud clusters, public instances etc. Fiorano supports containerization, hence enhancing scalability, high availability, sharing of workload and application deployment. 

The Fiorano Servers are containerized in a docker image for easy deployment and scaling at the user end. Docker containers wrap up the servers and their environment without the need for initial environment configuration. Kubernetes is used as a container orchestration tool for deploying the Fiorano SOA in a cluster while managing load balancing and also increasing fault tolerance. Fiorano SOA is compressed as an image and then deployed on to the Kubernetes cluster.

This section illustrates deploying Fiorano API servers in a Kubernetes cluster using Minikube.

Installing Fiorano platform and making changes in the installer

1. Click the link below, download the latest Fiorano Installer and install the same:
   https://www.fiorano.com/resources/product_downloads
2. Use ConfigDeployer from $FioranoHome/esb/tools to set up AGS server1 profile by modifying Cassandra DataStore URL, FESPrimary URL, FESSecondary URL with the customized IP (IP refers to the Cluster IP in Kubernetes which redirects requests to the pods in a deployment) 10.96.0.20 and the ports 9042, 2147 and 2148 respectively.
3. The postgres driver must be added to the $FioranoHome/esb/server/bin/server.conf as "/postgresql-9.1-902.jdbc4.jar" in the Fiorano Sources for postgres to connect.
4. Extract the stripInstaller.tar.gz and run the script in the format as mentioned in the Readme file to reduce the size of the installer.
5. Place a copy of the installer in the folder ams_build and ags_build to create separate AGS and AMS images.
6. Refer to the Creating Docker Image from the Fiorano setup and make changes in the dockerfile as necessary.

Installing Docker

For Debian-based Linux systems

1. Install Dependency packages

2. Add Docker's official GPG key:

   
   

3. Add the Docker repository

4. Install Docker Engine and Docker Compose

5. Add a user to the group to run docker commands as a nonprivileged user.
6. Log out and log back in so that the group membership is re-evaluated.

Creating a Docker Image from the Fiorano setup

Create a folder with the following structure and place Dockerfile

• Working directory

• • Fiorano
    • 12.1.0
  • Dockerfile
  • Postgres Driver

Contents of DockerFile: 

For creating ESB servers

To create docker image of AMS servers

To create docker image of AGS servers

Create the docker image from the setup 

Open the terminal to the folder with dockerfile and execute the command:

Save the docker image to a tar file

Likewise, docker images can be built and saved for Fiorano AGS, AMS and ESB servers as per requirement.

References and Side Note for docker

docker pull cassandra

docker system prune

docker ps -a 

Kubernetes Cluster Setup on Local System

Installing Virtual Box

Download the virtual box from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Installing Minikube (for Debian-based Linux)

Install and setup kubectl

Install Minikube

Start Minikube and check

Starting local Kubernetes v1.10.0 cluster...
Starting VM...
Downloading Minikube ISO
171.87 MB / 171.87 MB [============================================] 100.00% 0s
Getting VM IP address...
Moving files into cluster...
Downloading kubeadm v1.10.0
Downloading kubelet v1.10.0
Finished Downloading kubelet v1.10.0
Finished Downloading kubeadm v1.10.0
Setting up certs...
Connecting to cluster...
Setting up kubeconfig...
Starting cluster components...
Kubectl is now configured to use the cluster.
Loading cached images from config file.

Setting up a Kubernetes cluster

Set up a Network File System for persisting data 

1. Install nfs-server in the host machine and nfs-client in the client machine to access the files.

2. To link a host directory to mount point, edit /etc/fstab and then give the command below:
   
3. To mount a directory, edit /etc/exports and set the directory.

4. Use the command below to export all directories mentioned in the /etc/exports:

5. Check if it is mounted successfully using the command below:

Start Minikube

• For Windows 10 Professional Edition

  1. Install Chocolatey package manager for ease.
  2. Enable Hyper-V from Windows Features

  3. Using chocolatey, install kubernetes-cli using the command:
     

  4. Using chocolatey, install minikube using the command:
     
  5. To set where the VM needs to be created, add MINIKUBE_HOME=<pathofVMdir> to system properties.
  6. After it creates VM in the path, configure Hyper-V Switch Manager to allow internet access for the VM.

  7. Start minikube vm using the command:

• For Debian based Linux

  1. Start minikube and set up resources as per requirement 

  2. Open dashboard using the command:

Minikube file setup 

1. Ssh into the VM
   

2. Set user permissions in the data folder in minikube
   

3. Also note the <VM_IP> of the minikube node
   

Transfer the .tar files saved from docker

The tar file can be copied using scp command

Load the docker images  

Load the cassandra, postgres, AMS and AGS images

Enable port-forwarding in the minikube  

Create a script with contents as below and execute the script to open port forwarding:

Restart the minikube with existing configurations  

Execute the yaml files in the order mentioned below

1. services.yaml file contains the ports required to be exposed by the node for AMS servers and database while also taking care of directing requests. It is of type NodePort and has cluster IP 10.96.0.20
   

2. ags-services.yaml contains the ports for accessing resource created by a project. It is of type LoadBalancer and has cluster IP 10.96.0.30

   Icon

   Ensure that the service name in yaml corresponds to the app name of the deployment or stateful set to be created; otherwise it may not work properly.

   

3. Set the login credentials for postgres comprising of username, password in postgres-config.yaml

4.  Create persistent volumes and their respective claims for Cassandra, Postgres and Fiorano AMS runtimedata.

   
   

5. Create deployment for multicontainer pods containing Fiorano AMS and databases.

   
   
   Wait for 5 minutes to get all the containers running and the workloads to turn green from yellow which means deployments are successful.
   Check if deployment successful by opening the apimgmt dashboard in the browser.
   Common causes of deployment failure:

   1. Fiorano Installer License Expiry
   2. Unable to link to the persistent volume which may be due to unavailability of NFS-server
   3. Ensure that the docker image is loaded in minikube ssh and the docker image name correctly corresponds in the yaml file.

6. Create a stateful set for AGS servers. ( Ensure port forwarding has been enabled in VM before this step)

   
   

Login to the API management dashboard and check for the servers ags_0 etc. available in the server group - serverGroup1.

Deploy projects and check the accessibility of the resource hosted by the gateway servers by changing the IP to localhost:2160  

Scaling

Manual Scaling

Change the number of replicas manually by clicking "Edit" option in stateful sets in dashboard.

Autoscaling

1. For auto-scaling add resource request and limit value in AGS stateful sets.
   

   
   
   

2. Now stop minikube in current configuration 
   
3. Start minikube with the following arguments.

   1. For Debian based Linux:

   2. For Windows: 

      
      
      

4. Enable the metrics-server add on using the following command:
   

5. Then wait for some time and create the autoscaler
   

   

   For system details:
   For container details:
   For the above-mentioned autoscaler details:

   
   
   

6. For memory-based autoscaling, create a yaml file with the content below and set targetAverageUtilization in it as per requirement:

7. To deploy this autoscaler use the command below:

   
   
   

8. Use kubectl describe hpa to see what its doing
   
    
   To delete hpa, use:

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   This would work provided 2160 has been port forwarded in VM and the ags-service is deployed

Kubernetes Cluster Setup on Google Cloud with Istio

Creating Kubernetes Cluster on Google Cloud

Login and Select Kubernetes Engine on Google Cloud Platform

Create a cluster by running the following command on cloud shell

Retrieve your credentials for kubectl

Grant cluster administrator (admin) permissions to the current user

To create the necessary RBAC rules for Istio, the current user requires admin permissions.

Configuring Istio

Downloading Istio

Go to the Istio release page to download the installation file for your OS, or download and extract the latest release automatically (Linux or macOS) as mentioned in https://istio.io/docs/setup/getting-started/

Run the following in the cloud shell

Adding istioctl client to your cloud system path

Configuring Istio Profile

For this installation, we use the demo configuration profile. It’s selected to have a good set of defaults for testing along with dashboards like kiali, prometheus etc.

Configuring Istio Namespace to allow injection

Add a namespace label to instruct Istio to automatically inject Envoy sidecar proxies when you deploy your application later

Configuration changes to Fiorano installer for cloud setup

In the Fiorano Latest installer, change the IP for Cassandra, Primary and Secondary URL as 10.35.240.20 (configured cluster IP for AMS) in config deployer in for server1 profile AGS.

Configuring the Docker image

1. Upload the tar files created for AMS and AGS compressed as zip to the google cloud console, after upload extract the same. 
2. Change directory and go to the directory containing the docker images using cloud shell 

3. Run the following code blocks to load docker images to the cloud docker
   

   
   
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   Change the FIORANO_DOCKER_IMAGE to the actual docker image file name for both AMS and AGS

4. Add Cred Helper
   Add the Docker credHelper entry to Docker's configuration file, or creates the file if it doesn't exist. This will register gcloud as the credential helper for all Google-supported Docker registries. ( refer to https://cloud.google.com/container-registry/docs/pushing-and-pulling)
   

   

5. Create tags with registry name

   Example

6. Push the tagged images to container registry
   

   Example

Create Persistent Volume Claims

Run the following command to execute the yaml files for persistent volume claim configuration, please navigate to the folder containing the yamls before executing

1. cassandra_pv_pvc.yaml

2. postgres_pv_pvc.yaml

3. fiorano_pv_pvc.yaml

Configure Postgres Login

Apply the postgres configuration file for login credentials

The template of the file can be found here.

Create the load balancer services

Load Balancer configuration for AMS

Sample services.yaml can be found here

Load Balancer Configuration for AGS

Sample ags-services.yaml can be found here

Configuring Ingress hosts and ports

Create AMS, Cassandra and postgres deployment

Sample yaml file can be found here.

Create AGS stateful set deployment

Sample yaml file can be found here.

Create the kubernetes gateway service to access services outside a cluster

Sample yaml file can be found here.

Create the kubernetes virtual services which would specify host URI

Click the file names to get sample virtual.yaml and resource.yaml files

To check INGRESS_HOST and PORT give the following command in cloud shell

Load Kiali Dashboard