Set Up GitOps for the Redpanda Helm Chart

GitOps is a modern approach to managing and automating the deployment and provisioning process using Git as the single source of truth. It involves storing configuration files and deployment scripts in a Git repository, and then using automation tools to continuously monitor the repository for changes.

This example uses Flux to deploy the Redpanda Helm chart on a local Kubernetes cluster. Flux is a toolkit for GitOps with Kubernetes clusters that supports the following:

  • Version control for configurations: You can track changes, collaborate, and revert to previous configurations if needed.

  • Drift detection and remediation: Flux continuously monitors the Redpanda cluster’s state. If discrepancies are detected, Flux automatically remediates them to bring the Redpanda cluster back to the desired state.

  • Collaboration and auditing: Multiple team members can propose changes to Redpanda configurations through Git pull requests, enabling code reviews and discussions before changes are applied.

Prerequisites

You must have the following:

Create a local Kubernetes cluster

Create one master and three worker nodes (one worker node for each Redpanda broker).

  1. Define a cluster in the kind.yaml configuration file:

    cat <<EOF >kind.yaml
---
apiVersion: kind.x-k8s.io/v1alpha4
kind: Cluster
nodes:
  - role: control-plane
  - role: worker
  - role: worker
  - role: worker
EOF

  2. Create the Kubernetes cluster from the configuration file:

    kind create cluster --config kind.yaml

Run the lab

Fork this repository, and configure Flux to connect to your fork and deploy the Redpanda Helm chart.

  1. Fork the redpanda-data/redpanda-labs repository on GitHub.

  2. Bootstrap Flux for your forked repository.

    Make sure to do the following:

    • Provide Flux with your GitHub personal access token (PAT).

    • Configure the path flag with the value kubernetes/gitops-helm. This is the path where the example manifests are stored in the repository.

    Here is an example of the bootstrap command:

    flux bootstrap github \
  --token-auth \
  --owner=<github-username> \
  --repository=redpanda-labs \
  --branch=main \
  --path=./kubernetes/gitops-helm \
  --personal

    Replace <github-username> with your GitHub username.

The bootstrap script does the following:

  1. Creates a deploy token and saves it as a Kubernetes Secret

  2. Creates an empty GitHub project, if the project specified by --repository doesn’t exist

  3. Generates Flux definition files for your project

  4. Commits the definition files to the specified branch

  5. Applies the definition files to your cluster

  6. Applies the manifests in kubernetes/gitops-helm which deploy Redpanda and cert-manager

After you run the script, Flux is ready to manage itself and any other resources you add to the GitHub project at the specified path.

Verify the deployment

To verify that the deployment was successful, check the status of the HelmRelease resource:

kubectl get helmrelease redpanda --namespace redpanda --watch

In a few minutes, you should see that the Helm install succeeded:

NAME       AGE     READY   STATUS
redpanda   3m23s   True    Helm install succeeded for release redpanda/redpanda.v1 with chart redpanda@5.7.5

Manage updates

To update Redpanda, modify the redpanda-helm-release.yaml manifest in your Git repository. You can configure the Helm chart in the spec.values field. For a description of all available configurations, see the Redpanda Helm Chart Specification.

When you push changes to GitHub, Flux automatically applies the updates to your Kubernetes cluster.

Delete the cluster

To delete the Kubernetes cluster as well as all the Docker resources that kind created, run:

kind delete cluster

Suggested reading

See the interactive examples for setting up GitOps with the Redpanda Operator.