This is a step by step guide on setting up Kubernetes on Scaleway bare-metal ARM and x86-64. The main reason I’ve been working on this project is that I wanted to automate the creation of test environments for OpenFaaS and Weave Net on ARM. I was looking for a cheap solution to run integration tests and after trying out several cloud providers I’ve settled on Scaleway. Scaleway is a french cloud provider that offers bare-metal ARM and x86-64 servers at affordable prices. Using Terraform Scaleway provider along with kubeadm you can have a fully functional Kubernetes cluster in ten minutes

 Initial setup
Clone the repository and install the dependencies:
$ git clone httpsgithub.com/stefanprodan/k8s-scw-baremetal.git $ cd k8s-scw-baremetal $ terraform init
Note that you’ll need Terraform v0.10 or newer to run this project

Before running the project you’ll have to create an access token for Terraform to connect to the Scaleway API. Using the token and your access key, create two environment variables:
$ export SCALEWAY_ORGANIZATIONACCESS-KEY>" $ export SCALEWAY_TOKENACCESS-TOKEN>"
 Usage
Create an ARMv7 bare-metal Kubernetes cluster with one master and two nodes:
$ terraform workspace new arm $ terraform apply \ -var region=par1 \ -var arch=arm \ -var server_type=C1 \ -var nodes=2 \ -var weave_passwd=ChangeMe \ -var k8s_version=stable-1.9 \ -var docker_version=17.03.0~ce-0~ubuntu-xenial
This will do the following:
- reserves public IPs for each server
- provisions three bare-metal servers with Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS
- connects to the master server via SSH and installs Docker CE and kubeadm armhf apt packages
- runs kubeadm init on the master server and configures kubectl
- downloads the kubectl admin config file on your local machine and replaces the private IP with the public one
- creates a Kubernetes secret with the Weave Net password
- installs Weave Net with encrypted overlay
- installs cluster add-ons (Kubernetes dashboard, metrics server and Heapster)
- starts the worker nodes in parallel and installs Docker CE and kubeadm
- joins the worker nodes in the cluster using the kubeadm token obtained from the master
Scale up by increasing the number of nodes:
$ terraform apply -var nodes=3
Tear down the whole infrastructure with:
terraform-force
Create an AMD64 bare-metal Kubernetes cluster with one master and a node:

$ terraform workspace new amd64 $ terraform apply \ -var region=par1 \ -var arch=x86_64 \ -var server_type=C2S \ -var nodes=1 \ -var weave_passwd=ChangeMe \ -var k8s_version=stable-1.9 \ -var docker_version=17.03.0~ce-0~ubuntu-xenial
 Remote control
After applying the Terraform plan you’ll see several output variables like the master public IP, the kubeadmn join command and the current workspace admin config

In order to run
kubectl commands against the Scaleway cluster you can use the
kubectl_config output variable:
Check if Heapster works:
$ kubectl --kubeconfig terraform output kubectl_config) top nodes NAME CPU(cores) CPU% MEMORY(bytes) MEMORY% arm-master-1 655m 16% 873Mi 45% arm-node-1 147m 3% 618Mi 32% arm-node-2 101m 2% 584Mi 30%
The
kubectl config file format is
.conf as in
arm.conf or
amd64.conf

In order to access the dashboard you’ll need to find its cluster IP:
$ kubectl --kubeconfig terraform output kubectl_config) \ -n kube-system get svc --selector=k8s-app=kubernetes-dashboard NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE kubernetes-dashboard ClusterIP 10.107.37.220  80/TCP 6m
Open a SSH tunnel:
ssh -L 8888::80 [email protected]
Now you can access the dashboard on your computer at
httplocalhost:8888

 Expose services outside the cluster
Since we’re running on bare-metal and Scaleway doesn’t offer a load balancer, the easiest way to expose applications outside of Kubernetes is using a NodePort service

Let’s deploy the podinfo app in the default namespace. Podinfo has a multi-arch Docker image and it will work on arm, arm64 or amd64

Create the podinfo nodeport service:
$ kubectl --kubeconfig terraform output kubectl_config) \ apply -f httpsraw.githubusercontent.com/stefanprodan/k8s-podinfo/master/deploy/auto-scaling/podinfo-svc-nodeport.yaml service "podinfo-nodeport" created
Create the podinfo deployment:
$ kubectl --kubeconfig terraform output kubectl_config) \ apply -f httpsraw.githubusercontent.com/stefanprodan/k8s-podinfo/master/deploy/auto-scaling/podinfo-dep.yaml deployment "podinfo" created
Inspect the podinfo service to obtain the port number:
$ kubectl --kubeconfig terraform output kubectl_config) \ get svc --selector=app=podinfo NAME TYPE CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGE podinfo-nodeport NodePort 10.104.132.14  9898:31190/TCP 3m
You can access podinfo at
httpMASTER_PUBLIC_IP>:31190 or using curl:

$ curl httpterraform output k8s_master_public_ip):31190 runtime: arch: arm max_procs: "4" num_cpu: "4" num_goroutine: "12" os: linux version: go1.9.2 labels: app: podinfo pod-template-hash: "1847780700" annotations: kubernetes.io/config.seen: 2018-01-08T00:39:45.580597397Z kubernetes.io/config.source: api environment: HOME: /root HOSTNAME: podinfo-5d8ccd4c44-zrczc KUBERNETES_PORT: tcp10.96.0.1:443 KUBERNETES_PORT_443_TCP: tcp10.96.0.1:443 KUBERNETES_PORT_443_TCP_ADDR: 10.96.0.1 KUBERNETES_PORT_443_TCP_PORT: "443" KUBERNETES_PORT_443_TCP_PROTO: tcp KUBERNETES_SERVICE_HOST: 10.96.0.1 KUBERNETES_SERVICE_PORT: "443" KUBERNETES_SERVICE_PORT_HTTPS: "443" PATH: /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin externalIP: IPv4: 163.172.139.112
 OpenFaaS
You can deploy OpenFaaS on Kubernetes with Helm or by using the YAML files form the faas-netes repository

Clone the faas-netes repo:
git clone httpsgithub.com/openfaas/faas-netes cd faas-netes
Deploy OpenFaaS for ARM:
$ kubectl --kubeconfig terraform output kubectl_config) \ apply -f ./namespaces.ymlyaml_armhf
Deploy OpenFaaS for AMD64:
$ kubectl --kubeconfig terraform output kubectl_config) \ apply -f ./namespaces.ymlyaml
You can access the OpenFaaS gateway at
httpMASTER_PUBLIC_IP>:31112

 Horizontal Pod Autoscaling
Starting from Kubernetes 1.9
kube-controller-manager is configured by default with
horizontal-pod-autoscaler-use-rest-clients

In order to use HPA we need to install the metrics server to enable the new metrics API used by HPA v2

Both Heapster and the metrics server have been deployed from Terraform
when the master node was provisioned

The metric server collects resource usage data from each node using Kubelet Summary API. Check if the metrics server is running:
$ kubectl --kubeconfig terraform output kubectl_config) \ get --raw "/apis/metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1/nodes" | jq
{ "kind": "NodeMetricsList", "apiVersion": "metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1", "metadata": { "selfLink": "/apis/metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1/nodes" }, "items": [ { "metadata": { "name": "arm-master-1", "selfLink": "/apis/metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1/nodes/arm-master-1", "creationTimestamp": "2018-01-08T15:17:09Z" }, "timestamp": "2018-01-08T15:17:00Z", "window": "1m0s", "usage": { "cpu": "384m", "memory": "935792Ki" } }, { "metadata": { "name": "arm-node-1", "selfLink": "/apis/metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1/nodes/arm-node-1", "creationTimestamp": "2018-01-08T15:17:09Z" }, "timestamp": "2018-01-08T15:17:00Z", "window": "1m0s", "usage": { "cpu": "130m", "memory": "649020Ki" } }, { "metadata": { "name": "arm-node-2", "selfLink": "/apis/metrics.k8s.io/v1beta1/nodes/arm-node-2", "creationTimestamp": "2018-01-08T15:17:09Z" }, "timestamp": "2018-01-08T15:17:00Z", "window": "1m0s", "usage": { "cpu": "120m", "memory": "614180Ki" } } ] }
Let’s define a HPA that will maintain a minimum of two replicas and will scale up to ten if the CPU average is over 80% or if the memory goes over 200Mi

apiVersion: autoscaling/v2beta1 kind: HorizontalPodAutoscaler metadata: name: podinfo spec: scaleTargetRef: apiVersion: apps/v1beta1 kind: Deployment name: podinfo minReplicas: 2 maxReplicas: 10 metrics: - type: Resource resource: name: cpu targetAverageUtilization: 80 - type: Resource resource: name: memory targetAverageValue: 200Mi

Apply the podinfo HPA:
$ kubectl --kubeconfig terraform output kubectl_config) \ apply -f httpsraw.githubusercontent.com/stefanprodan/k8s-podinfo/master/deploy/auto-scaling/podinfo-hpa.yaml horizontalpodautoscaler "podinfo" created
After a couple of seconds the HPA controller will contact the metrics server and will fetch the CPU and memory usage:
$ kubectl --kubeconfig terraform output kubectl_config) get hpa NAME REFERENCE TARGETS MINPODS MAXPODS REPLICAS AGE podinfo Deployment/podinfo 2826240 / 200Mi, 15% / 80% 2 10 2 5m
In order to increase the CPU usage we could run a load test with hey:
#install hey go get -u github.com/rakyll/hey #do 10K requests rate limited at 20 QPS hey -n 10000 -q 10 -c 5 httpterraform output k8s_master_public_ip):31190
You can monitor the autoscaler events with:
$ kubectl --kubeconfig terraform output kubectl_config) describe hpa Events: Type Reason Age From MessageNormal SuccessfulRescale 7m horizontal-pod-autoscaler New size: 4; reason: cpu resource utilization (percentage of request) above target Normal SuccessfulRescale 3m horizontal-pod-autoscaler New size: 8; reason: cpu resource utilization (percentage of request) above target
After the load tests finishes the autoscaler will remove replicas until the deployment reaches the initial replica count:
Events: Type Reason Age From MessageNormal SuccessfulRescale 20m horizontal-pod-autoscaler New size: 4; reason: cpu resource utilization (percentage of request) above target Normal SuccessfulRescale 16m horizontal-pod-autoscaler New size: 8; reason: cpu resource utilization (percentage of request) above target Normal SuccessfulRescale 12m horizontal-pod-autoscaler New size: 10; reason: cpu resource utilization (percentage of request) above target Normal SuccessfulRescale 6m horizontal-pod-autoscaler New size: 2; reason: All metrics below target
 Conclusions
Thanks to kubeadm and Terraform, bootstrapping a Kubernetes cluster on bare-metal can be done with a single command and it takes just ten minutes to have a fully functional setup. If you have any suggestion on improving this guide please submit an issue or PR on GitHub at stefanprodan/k8s-scw-baremetal. Contributions are more than welcome!