Alibaba Cloud DevOps:Use Kubernetes kubectl to release applications

Solution overview

1. Add a deployment job.

2. Configure a deployment job.

3. View deployment logs.

Add a deployment job

You can add a deployment job by using one of the following methods.

• When you create a pipeline, select a template that includes a Kubernetes apply step.

  On the Visual Orchestration tab, select the Java category from the left pane. Choose the Java · Test, build image and deploy to Kubernetes cluster/Alibaba Cloud Container Service template, and then click Create.

• Add a new job to a pipeline and then add a Kubernetes apply step.

  From the job panel, select the Deploy category on the left, and then choose Kubernetes apply on the right.

Configure a deployment job

For the Kubectl Apply step, configure the following settings:

1. Select an existing or create a new Kubernetes cluster connection. For more information about how to create a Kubernetes cluster connection, see Manage Kubernetes clusters.

   Configure the other parameters for the Kubernetes apply step: Set the Kubectl version (for example, v1.16.4), Namespace (for example, default), and YAML path (for example, app-configs/manifest2). If needed, select options such as Use Replace mode, Skip TLS Verification, and Skip template validation. Then, in the Variables section, configure parameters like the image.

2. Enter the target Namespace for the deployment.

3. Enter the YAML path for the current deployment and add the necessary variables.

   1. In the Kubernetes YAML file, use the ${IMAGE} placeholder to define the Docker image as a dynamic variable.

      apiVersion: apps/v1
      kind: Deployment
      metadata:
        labels:
          run: spring-boot-sample
        name: spring-boot-sample
      spec:
        replicas: 4
        selector:
          matchLabels:
            run: spring-boot-sample
        template:
          metadata:
            labels:
              run: spring-boot-sample
          spec:
            containers:
              image: ${image}
              name: nginx

   2. In the Kubernetes apply step, you can pass variables to the YAML file. In the step configuration, click Add to define each variable and its source. These variables dynamically replace the placeholders in your YAML file during deployment. In the Kubernetes apply step's variables section, set the value of the image variable to the output of the image build step (which is the image URL produced by the Build image and push to Alibaba Cloud Container Registry step). This replaces the ${image} placeholder in the YAML file with the actual image URL at deployment time. The deployment will use the configured cluster connection (for example, corefile-test), Kubectl version (for example, v1.16.4), namespace (for example, default), and YAML path (for example, app-configs/manifest2).

   Note

   For use cases of YAML files in Kubernetes, see References to Kubernetes YAML specifications.

View deployment logs

After the configuration is complete, run the pipeline to run the deployment job. The YAML file in the source code is deployed to the specified Kubernetes cluster.

1. During the deployment, click Logs to view its progress and related logs.

2. The log output includes all scanned YAML files, the standard output from kubectl apply, and a summary of all resource changes after the deployment.

   For example, the kubectl apply command outputs deployment.apps/spring-boot-sample configured. The resource summary shows that spring-boot-sample has been running for 105m. Finally, the message [SUCCESS] Step executed successfully confirms that the application was successfully deployed to the Kubernetes cluster.

References to Kubernetes YAML specifications