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Kubernetes Overview

The Synthetic app is hosted on AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS).

General overview of Synthetic's architecture

Environments​

Currently, we have two environments: staging and prod.

Both environments are run in the same AKS cluster and in the same namespace.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)​

Both the AWS configuration and the Kubernetes objects are defined in code.

This allows for consistent and repeatable deployments and a declarative source of truth for the intended production state.

Kubernetes setup​

The AWS CLI can auto-config your kubconfig for you. Run the following in your terminal:

# After setting up AWS credentials (eg. with `aws sso login`)
aws eks update-kubeconfig --region us-east-1 --name synthetic-eks
warning

Proceed with caution: this enables you to fully edit (and break) production state.

Install K9s​

k9s is a useful CLI for working with Kubernetes; it's like the K8s dashboard, but in your terminal.

k9s is incredible

On macOS:

brew install k9s

On Ubuntu:

./scripts/install-k9s-deb.sh

On Arch:

sudo pacman -S k9s

K9s Debug Containers​

Sometimes it may be useful to get a debug shell for a running container. Kubernetes has this functionality built in. (kubectl debug)

For convenience, you can add this as a keyboard shortcut in k9s with a plugin.

  1. Run k9s info
  2. Add the following to your plugins.yaml file.
plugins:
  #--- Create debug container for selected pod in current namespace
  # See https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/debug/debug-application/debug-running-pod/#ephemeral-container
  debug:
    shortCut: Shift-D
    description: Add debug container
    dangerous: true
    scopes:
      - containers
    command: bash
    background: false
    confirm: true
    args:
      - -c
      - "kubectl --kubeconfig=$KUBECONFIG debug -it --context $CONTEXT -n=$NAMESPACE $POD --target=$NAME --image=nicolaka/netshoot:v0.12 --share-processes -- bash"
  1. Press Shift-D or your configured shortcut in the Containers scope of any Pod.

Note the new Shift-D shortcut.