self-config

Terraform / Ansible configuration for my servers

GCP configuration

• Create a GCP project

• Create a Service Account and give it the Project Owner role

• If you are using terraform on your workstation, you will need to install the Google Cloud SDK and authenticate using User Application Default Credentials.

• Create a GCS bucket:

  • This first step uses a local terraform.state to create the Terraform backend for the rest of terraform playbooks.

    cd terraform/gcp-management
    terraform init
    terraform plan
    terraform apply
    

  • If the GCS already exists but no terraform.state is present, import it instead of running terraform apply:

    terraform import google_storage_bucket.farzad-infrastructure farzad-infrastructure
    

• Delete default VPC network called default

• Delete default firewall rules

• Add public SSH key to Compute Engine Metadata with the login farzad_farid

Scaleway configuration

• Create a Scaleway account
• Create a project, or use Default project
• Create an API key on https://console.scaleway.com/iam/api-keys using the documentation
• Put the key in $HOME/.config/scw/config.yaml along with organization id, project id, default region, default zone

Terraform

• Configure GCP project name and region in terraform/gcp/setup.tf

    cd terraform/gcp
    terraform init
    terraform plan
    terraform apply
  

Ansible

Initial configuration

• Install XCode command line tools

    xcode-select --install
  

• Install Ansible personal key

    echo "THIS PASSWORD" > ~/.ansible-personal-key
  

• Install poetry

    brew install poetry
  

• Run poetry install after each pyproject.toml update

• Configure Git subtrees

    git remote add -f ansible-role-nginx https://github.com/nginxinc/ansible-role-nginx.git
    git subtree add --prefix ansible/roles/nginxinc.nginx ansible-role-nginx master --squash
  

Using Ansible

poetry shell
cd ansible

Install Galaxy modules:

ansible-galaxy collection install -r requirements.yml

Here are some sample ansible commands:

ansible-playbook playbooks/web.yml -v --diff
ansible-playbook playbooks/web.yml --tags=nginx --skip-tags=deploy -v --diff
ansible-playbook playbooks/web.yml --tags=nginx_template_config -v --diff
ansible-playbook playbooks/web.yml -v --diff --check
ansible-playbook playbooks/web.yml --list-tasks
ansible-playbook playbooks/web.yml --list-tags
ansible-playbook -v --diff playbooks/mac.yml
ansible-playbook -v --diff --vault-id personal@~/.ansible-personal-key playbooks/mac.yml
ansible-vault decrypt --output - vars/vault.yml
ansible-vault encrypt_string 'XXXX' --name github_token
ansible-vault encrypt_string --vault-id personal@~/.ansible-personal-key --encrypt-vault-id personal 'XXXX' --name github_token

Note: If vault_identity_list is set in ansible.cfg, there is no need to use --vault-id or --encrypt-vault-id on the command line.

Updating

• Update Python modules:

    poetry update
  

• Update Git subtrees:

    git fetch --all -v
    git subtree pull --prefix ansible/roles/nginxinc.nginx ansible-role-nginx master --squash
  

Configuring Powerline fonts for Powerlevel10k

• Run p10k configure to at least download and install the fonts.
• When instructed, quit and relaunch iTerm2.

You should not need to further configure P10K because Ansible already did so.

KinD (Kubernetes in Docker)

KinD is installed on a Scaleway server.

SSH Setup

Sign the server host key using our SSH CA.

• Copy the CA key and certificate to /root.ssh
• Sign the host certificates:

cd /etc/ssh
for cert in ssh_host_*_key.pub ; do ssh-keygen -s ~/.ssh/ca_host_key -h -I k8s.farzad.tech $cert ; done
rm -f /root/.ssh/ca_host_key*

• Add the following lines to /etc/ssh/sshd_config:

HostCertificate /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key-cert.pub
HostCertificate /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key-cert.pub
HostCertificate /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key-cert.pub

• Restart SSH server

service sshd restart

Setup

Set KinD configuration in ansible/playbooks/kind-server.yml:

• kind_cluster_name
• kind_config: Check https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/docs/user/configuration/

Run Ansible:

ansible-playbook --diff playbooks/kind-server.yml

The Kubeconfig file is now available at /tmp/kubeconfig-multi.yaml.

Merging the remote Kubeconfig with the local one

This can be done using the trick from the website in the references. You have to be careful when the keys already exist in the local Kubeconfig. It will be so if you recreate the KinD cluster multiple times with the same name.

I found that inputting the configuration files in the following order works:

KUBECONFIG=/tmp/kubeconfig-multi.yaml:~/.kube/config kubectl config view --flatten > ~/.kube/config-new
# Compare config and config-new to make sure that everything is OK
mv ~/.kube/config-new ~/.kube/config
chmod 600 ~/.kube/config

Accessing the KinD cluster

You need to open an SSH tunnel, for example like this:

ssh -L 46419:localhost:46419 -T root@kind.farzad.tech

And access the cluster with its context name which is kind-<CLUSTER-NAME>.

Limitations:

• The Kube API server cannot be directly exposed on the Internet because the domain name is not part of the X509 certificate and kubectl will refuse the connection.
• My goal is to be able to shut down the server in order to save money. But KinD in HA mode (multiple control planes) does not support restarts ! This is because Docker changes the nodes' IPs, and the control plane components cannot find each other anymore. You must therefore avoid creating HA clusters, unless you are sure to keep the server up and running.

References

• Git Subtree: https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/git-subtree
• How to merge Kubernetes config files: https://medium.com/@jacobtomlinson/how-to-merge-kubernetes-kubectl-config-files-737b61bd517d
• Fix multi-node cluster not working after restarting docker: kubernetes-sigs/kind#2775
• HA clusters don't reboot properly: kubernetes-sigs/kind#1689