Microservices with load balancer on Kubernetes cluster

These modules deploy a simple demo app to an IKS Cluster using a Load Balancer deployment.

Load Balancer Deployment

Table of Contents

1. Setup
2. Deployment
3. Load Balancer Depolyment Pattern
4. Module Variables

---

Setup

Ensure that the account you're using to create this deployment has permissions to create Load Balancer for VPC. When you create a load balancer service, a VPC load balancer is automatically created

Creating the Image In IBM Cloud Container Registry

In order to make sure this architecture deploys correctly, ensure that you have copied any icr image pull secrets into the namespace where the app will be deployed if you're using ICR for the images. You will need to have Docker installed locally. You can find more information on getting started with IBM Container Registry here.

Both of these deployment patterns use a node demo app. To upload this example application to IBM Cloud Container Registry follow these steps:

1. Log in to IBM Cloud using the CLI

ibmcloud login

2. Log in to the IBM Container Registry

ibmcloud cr login

3. If you do not have a namespace you want to use with your app, create a namespace:

ibmcloud cr namespace-add <my_namespace>

4. In the ./node-demo-app directory run this command to build the docker container:

docker build . -t <image_name>:<tag>

5. Next, tag the image to upload to ICR

docker tag <image_name>:<tag> <region>.icr.io/<my_namespace>/<new_image_repo>:<new_tag>

6. Push the image to ICR

docker push <region>.icr.io/<my_namespace>/<new_image_repo>:<new_tag>

---

Deployment

This pattern creates an IKS deployment equivalant to this .yaml file:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: demo-app
  namespace: default
  labels:
    app: demo-app
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: test-app
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: api-service
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: <region>.icr.io/<my_namespace>/<new_image_repo>:<new_tag>
        name: test-app
        env:
            - name: PORT
              value: 8080

---

Load Balancer Depolyment Pattern

Once the application has been deploued, the script creates a Load Balancer service. This service will create a Load Balancer for VPC where the application can be accessed. Please note that the application will not be available until the Load Balancer has finished creating. To access the application, you will need add the app_port to your Load Balancer URL:

<your_lb_host_name>:<app_port>

---

Module Variables

The following variables are used for both deployment methods.

Variable	Type	Description	Default
ibmcloud_api_key	String	The IBM Cloud platform API key needed to deploy IAM enabled resources
generation	String	Generation of VPC. Can be 1 or 2	2
ibm_region	String	IBM region for IKS on VPC cluster	us-south
group	String	Name of resource group to provision resources	asset-development
app_name	String	Name for app in kubernetes	demo-app
namespace	String	Namespace to deploy application	default
container_name	String	Name for container in deployment	api-service
app_image	String	link to app image to install
app_port	String	Port for app to run	8080
protocol	String	Service protocol	TCP
service_port	String	Port for application	8080
cluster_name	String	name of IKS cluster
lb_type	String	IKS on VPC load balancer type. Can be public or private	public