Install bitnami/nginx

Installing the Bitnami standalone nginx web server Chart involves us using the helm install command.

A Helm Chart can be installed multiple times inside a Kubernetes cluster. This is because each installation of a Chart can be customized to suit a different purpose.

For this reason, you must supply a unique name for the installation, or ask Helm to generate a name for you.

Challenge:

How can you use Helm to deploy the bitnami/nginx chart?

HINT: Use the helm utility to install the bitnami/nginx chart and specify the name mywebserver for the Kubernetes deployment. Consult the helm install documentation or run the helm install --help command to figure out the syntax.

Expand here to see the solution

Once you run this command, the output confirms the types of Kubernetes objects that were created as a result:


NAME: mywebserver
LAST DEPLOYED: Tue Feb 18 22:02:13 2020
NAMESPACE: default
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
TEST SUITE: None
NOTES:
Get the NGINX URL:

  NOTE: It may take a few minutes for the LoadBalancer IP to be available.
        Watch the status with: 'kubectl get svc --namespace default -w mywebserver-nginx'

  export SERVICE_IP=$(kubectl get svc --namespace default mywebserver-nginx --template "{{ range (index .status.loadBalancer.ingress 0) }}{{.}}{{ end }}")
  echo "NGINX URL: http://$SERVICE_IP/"

RESOURCES:
==> v1beta1/Deployment
NAME               AGE
mywebserver-nginx  0s

==> v1/Pod(related)

NAME                                READY  STATUS             RESTARTS  AGE
mywebserver-nginx-85985c8466-tczst  0/1    ContainerCreating  0         0s

==> v1/Service

NAME               AGE
mywebserver-nginx  0s

In the following kubectl command examples, it may take a minute or two for each of these objects’ DESIRED and CURRENT values to match; if they don’t match on the first try, wait a few seconds, and run the command again to check the status.

The first object shown in this output is a Deployment. A Deployment object manages rollouts (and rollbacks) of different versions of an application.

You can inspect this Deployment object in more detail by running the following command:

kubectl describe deployment mywebserver

The next object shown created by the Chart is a Pod. A Pod is a group of one or more containers.

To verify the Pod object was successfully deployed, we can run the following command:

kubectl get pods -l app.kubernetes.io/name=nginx

And you should see output similar to:


NAME                                 READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
mywebserver-nginx-85985c8466-tczst   1/1       Running   0          10s

The third object that this Chart creates for us is a Service. A Service enables us to contact this nginx web server from the Internet, via an Elastic Load Balancer (ELB).

To get the complete URL of this Service, run:

kubectl get service mywebserver-nginx -o wide

That should output something similar to:


NAME                TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP
mywebserver-nginx   LoadBalancer   10.100.223.99   abc123.amazonaws.com

Copy the value for EXTERNAL-IP, open a new tab in your web browser, and paste it in.

It may take a couple minutes for the ELB and its associated DNS name to become available; if you get an error, wait one minute, and hit reload.

When the Service does come online, you should see a welcome message similar to:

Helm Logo

Congratulations! You’ve now successfully deployed the nginx standalone web server to your EKS cluster!